


Prospect

by T_Pot



Category: Original Work
Genre: Bad Parenting, Divorce, Drama, Family, Homophobia, Interracial Romance, M/M, contemporary
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-04-20
Updated: 2015-12-11
Packaged: 2018-03-25 00:54:05
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 16
Words: 60,819
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3790540
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/T_Pot/pseuds/T_Pot
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>With a low maintenance boyfriend and a family of homophobes to fulfill his emotional needs, Alex McKinley thinks he's set. Turns out he isn't. The homophobes' gay son returns, his low maintenance boyfriend isn't so low maintenance anymore and his family looks like it's going to fall apart a second time. And Alex is still looking for someone to blame; SLASH.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

It is Reilly's birthday. Fittingly, it is hotter than usual, a not-so-brisk 98 degrees.

It doesn't help matters any that Alex can smell the pie burning from the end of the driveway. The front door slams hard into the wall as he goes in and it takes him all of a minute to switch off the oven and drop the charred pecan pie into the sink.

The kitchen is thick with the smell of burning and as Alex goes to crack a window, his knee cracks against the table-legs. He leans against the counter for a moment, breathing in the fresh air and willing the sting in his leg to subside.

A movement in the doorway makes him turn. "The timer didn't go off," Reilly says.

Even though it probably did. They can both see the fully functional egg timer perched on top of the microwave, the same timer he'd studiously set at fifteen minutes before popping out to grab some beer for dinner.

Alex runs water over the pie until it stops smoking and the pastry is nothing more than a sodden mess and the filling looks like vomit in the sink. He can't quite bring himself to be angry, or even surprised. "Where's Dad?"

"In the library."Reilly says with the kind of bite in her tone that makes it clear she won't be apologizing any time soon.

Alex looks out into the backyard and sees his father leaning against the fence, book in one hand, Guinness in the other and one foot planted firmly in the vegetable patch. A healthy tomato leaf pokes out from beneath his foot.

He knocks on the window for a good minute until his father bristles and looks up. "What?" He yells.

"Dinner." Alex mouths.

Reilly brushes past him to get glasses from the cabinet.

"So, pudding cups for dessert?" Alex says. It sounds more like a joke than he means it to and Reilly's small huff of laughter is absurdly gratifying.

"The good life, baby." Reilly mutters with a smirk.

"Happy birthday, then." Alex says.

Reilly acknowledges him with a small smile.

Compared to most days, it is awfully generous. It isn't most days that he is vilified for baking a pie and then graced with a smile. It's a special occasion so Alex doesn't feel the usual jolt of repulsion.

The house is small enough - a luxurious total of 1500 square feet with a matchbox back yard - that if Alex wanted to, he wouldn't even have to yell and Lily would hear him. But he goes anyway, out of the kitchen and a total of two and a half steps before poking his head into her and Jack's room. "Dinner," he turns back, but not fast enough.

"Hey, Alex, listen!"

Maybe if Reilly had taken that particular moment to kick a chair, Alex could escape; he knows she can hear. But she doesn't help.

Lily is sat cross-legged on the bed in sweatpants, her frizzy hair in a ponytail and her black-framed glasses almost to the edge of her nose. Twenty-nine, she writes with the intensity of a six year old. "I think it's really nice of you to make dinner for Reilly. I'm sure she appreciates it," Lily says and glances up at him.

Alex honestly does not know why Lily even bothers any more. Any sane person would have dispensed with the to-be step-kids if they'd spent six peaceful months settling their outline into the pillows. Instead, Lily tries and she tries.

"Who else is gonna do it?" Alex says with all the grace he can muster and goes back to the kitchen. Reilly is grinning, pleased as punch. This is probably a better birthday present for her than the hundred dollars crisp in the back-pocket of his jeans. She lives in relative harmony with Lily but chaos is something she thrives off of, in any situation.

Jack has settled in the kitchen chair and the kitchen is so small and the table edged up so close to practically everything that he doesn't even have to get up to grab a beer from the counter. Reilly sets the pot of spaghetti bolognaise onto the table. Alex squeezes past her to scoop the remains of the pie into the trashcan.

"What's that?" Jack asks.

"Alex's culinary exploits," Reilly says as she plops into the chair.

Alex joins them and Lily moments later. Reilly's plate is half-empty by the time Alex scoops some spaghetti into Jack and Lily's plates. A nervous flutter settles itself in his gut, his phone feels hot against his skin but he forces himself to focus on dinner.

Reilly shoots him a look, smiling unkindly even as she chews. He can practically hear her think it:  _Mother hen._

"Need something?" Alex says sweetly.

Reilly rolls her eyes and looks away.

"Happy birthday, Reilly." Lily says briskly. "How old is it then?"

Alex resists the urge to roll his eyes as he doles spaghetti into his own plate.

Reilly smiles indulgently and says, "Eighteen. Officially legal."

"God help us, huh?" Jack says and snickers.

This time, Alex does roll his eyes. He suspects Reilly does too but these days, she's on better terms with their father than Alex. All sorts of miracles of human courtesy manifest when Reilly is not out to make someone's life hell.

His father sees and affords Alex the sort of smile reserved for someone inconvenient. Six months may be long enough for Lily but it isn't long enough for Alex to get used to that look. "You sure they don't need you at the garage? Or Donut?" Jack says.

"Positive, Dad." Alex says.

"I could drive Reilly. Not like we mind." Jack says and grins at Lily.

"It's alright. I worked it out with Benji." Alex says.

"Sure?" Jack says again.

Alex nods shortly, even though he knows Jack knows. They've already talked about it. He isn't sure when these banal reiterations became part of the family vernacular but these days, plans are the staple. Everything must be made sure of, like if Reilly missed her flight, everybody would keel over dead. Alex supposes it reassures Jack that their motley, fuck-up crew is a family unit and not a motley, fuck-up crew. Even though they all know what it really is.

"Fletcher could drive me, you know. He offered. Not like he has anything to do except send out college applications." Reilly says.

"It's in Alex's way." Lily says.

This gives even Jack pause.

"It's fifty miles  _out_ of my way in the opposite direction. It's another city." Alex says matter-of-factly.

"What I mean to say is that it's best this way. It'll be cathartic…"

Reilly doesn't even bother to hide her grin and Alex snorts without meaning to. Lily truly reserves the gems for them.

Jack clears his throat. Under the most fortuitous of circumstances, he is tall and swarthy enough to be formidable. Now is not those times, but still and stern, he says, "Lily's right. One whole month in San Francisco then a week back home before four years of college. Barring a few holidays, you'll barely get to see each other. Plenty can change in four years."

Reilly and Alex exchange a glance and the obvious response hangs between them:  _plenty can change in six months too._  But neither can quite say it. Instead, Reilly slurps the last of the bolognaise from her bowl just as Alex forces down the first bite.

At the sink, rinsing her plate, she says, "Mom might want some of her books back. I need help finding the good ones out of all that… garbage."

Time doesn't really come to a stop. Reilly takes a vicious sort of pleasure in mentioning their mother in front of Lily.

"She already took all the good ones. Besides, I'm going over to the Coopers tonight."

"Jesus." Reilly says and slides the plate into the rack with a clatter. "What's the deal now?"

"Nothing. Just Mrs. Cooper wants a cake."

"Did all of her own children die?"

Alex does not mean to respond but the queasiness in his stomach returns and he says, "No. They'll be busy today. Danny Cooper's back from Albuqeruqe. They're having him over for dinner."

Reilly turns to give him an amused look. "Gay Danny Cooper?"

"Yeah."

"Jesus, and you're going over there?"

Alex glances over at Jack and Lily and says, "Yeah."

Lily sets her beer bottle down and clears her throat. "Do you think that's a good idea?"

"It's a great idea." Jack cuts in.

The shock robs him of words and across the kitchen, Reilly's eyebrows nearly disappear into her fringe.

"Really, Dad? A  _great_  idea?" Reilly intones.

"Yes. Things like that can get awkward. It's useful to have a third party present." Jack nods.

Reilly catches Alex's eyes and says, "So that they don't punch out their own son?"

Alex laughs even though it isn't the least bit funny. "They're not like that."

Reilly grants him a pitying smile."Well, I guess you'll soon find out, won't you?"

* * *

The Cooper house centers itself around a sitting room that is always empty. The residents of that particular house arrange themselves around the edges – Mr. Cooper on the back porch, Mrs. Cooper in the downstairs bedroom, Janey in the upstairs bedroom with her violin that she is only allowed to play from four to five in the evening and Tommy in the garage.

There is a peculiar quality of silence to that house, a precipitous backdrop behind every noise that swallowed a sound as soon as it was uttered.

It is eight in the evening when Alex arrives with a cake box in hand. He goes past the neatly-mown lawn to the cypress trees at the back of the house. A lean, brown-haired boy leans against the shed, smoking a cigarette.

"Hey, everyone home?" Alex says. He takes the cigarette Tommy offers and tucks it into his jacket pocket.

"Where else would they be?" Tommy says around his cigarette, looking past Alex's shoulder.

"How… How is it, then?" Alex says. "Where's Janey?"

Tommy spares him an irritated, side-long glance and there is a snagging, suspended moment. "How should it be?"

Tommy's non-answers do not irritate him, just like Tommy rarely irritates him. Unlike Reilly, Tommy is not enough within Alex's periphery to judge.

He leaves him by the shed and goes in through the kitchen door. Mrs. Cooper, lean and gaunt, stands by the stove, looking as if she is doing nothing but staring into space. Empty takeout containers litter one side of the counter and the microwave is whirring. No home-cooked meals today.

"Hi, Mrs. Cooper." Alex says.

"Oh, Alex. You're here." There is no shadow of relief in her voice, only resignation.

He sets the cake box on the counter and through the window, spies Tommy against the shed. Tommy looks straight through him.

"Is that Alex?" Mr. Cooper calls from the next room. His voice cuts loud and desperate through the silence of the house.

Alex follows his voice to the sitting room, to a room that he has never really seen properly lit. Mr. Cooper sits on the sofa, short and lean. Janey is next to him and across from them both, there lounges Danny Cooper. He is surprisingly square-jawed and his eyes are bright as they meet Alex's.

"Alex, this is Danny. Danny, Alex." Mr. Cooper says.

Alex nods, Danny nods. Alex reaches forward to shake his hand and after an amused moment's delay, Danny half-rises off the couch to shake it.

"Nice to meet you." Alex decides against saying  _I've heard so much about you_  to an openly gay boy returning to a small town. "We went to school together but you probably don't remember."

Danny's smile is polite even though his eyes linger for a moment on his face.

"Alex works down at the garage. You know Mr. Whitfield's garage. And at Donut in town." Janey interjects. She is in a dress today and there are curls in her hair. It is more dressed up than he has ever seen her and he knows with certainty that Danny will not notice. Not when Danny remembers Janey as a ten year old – not as a fifteen year old.

Alex lingers awkwardly for a moment before plopping down on an armchair next to Danny. "So, how was Albuquerque?"

Danny's smile does not falter. "About as hot as down here. It's only a hundred miles away."

It shouldn't but the condescension endears him to Alex. If there is anything in life Alex is used to, it is condescension. "You majored in Sociology, right?"

Danny's eyes flick back to him and he shrugs. "Yeah. The usual, you know. I took classes called Inequality in Higher Education and the cheapest books cost a hundred dollars." He grins down at his hands as if remembering a private joke and sits back in his chair. Suddenly warm, he asks: "And you?"

Before Alex can even think of how to phrase his response, Mr. Cooper cuts in, "Alex's been working at the garage for about two years now. He's pretty handy with a wrench."

"Wow," Danny says and widens his eyes. A smile is playing at the corners of his lips and it is clear that he thinks this whole night is a big fucking joke.

Alex can sense Mr. Cooper's irritation from across the room. "I didn't go to college." Alex says. "Couldn't afford it."

Janey is wringing her palms in her laps. Alex meets her eyes and smiles reassuringly but she seems not to notice.

"Oh." Danny says and exaggeratedly clears his throat. "How old are you?"

"Twenty-one." Alex says.

"Did you take a gap year?" This is delivered with a grin – but not a kind one.

"No. I failed a year in school." Alex says. This is decidedly not going the way he thought it would. He had expected silence but there is a shadow of belligerence in Danny Cooper that Alex has only ever seen in people like Reilly.

Danny nods sagely and turns to look at his father. "I generally failed in life." He stops just short of actually saying  _Right, Dad?_  But he doesn't need to. Janey seems to stop breathing. "Well… it gets better and all that."

Alex smiles down at his boots. He has caught the whiff of booze on Danny's breath and he gets it, he really does. But across the room, Janey's wringing her hands so hard they're turning white and Alex finds it hard not to resent Danny for that. "I think I'll go."

"Stay if you like." Mr. Cooper says stonily and his eyes are fixed on Danny.

"I'm driving Reilly up to Albuquerque tomorrow. Need to fill up the tank." Alex says. "Enjoy the cake."

"I'll walk you out." Janey springs up from her seat.

"Right. Good to meet you, Danny." Alex says and follows Janey out of the room.

There is a gentle easing of air the farther he gets from the sitting room and by the time, he reaches his car, his heart is beating steady in his chest. A warm breeze blows across the street, half-perfect suburbia. In a house across the street, a creaky swing set groans. Alex leans against the hood of his car next to Janey, feeling shaky. "How's your book report?"

"Boring." She bites the inside of her cheek, waiting and Alex does her the courtesy of bringing it up.

"One thousand six hundred and thirty four days," he says conversationally.

"Long time." Janey says. "It doesn't seem like five years."

"Hm."

"What kind of person do you suppose he is?"

"I just met him five minutes ago."

"I know. But if you had to  _extrapolate_ …" Janey remarks. There is nothing coy or joking about her demeanor, just a patient expectation of information.

"He's a bit hard to read. But if I had to guess, I'd say that he's the sort of person who likes a strawberry sundae."

Janey snorts under her breath, trying to suppress a smile and failing. "Ha-ha. That wasn't a gay joke, was it?"

"Don't think so." Alex says and smiles at her.

She digs the toes of her sandals right into the gravel. "You remember what we talked about? Last week at Donut."

"About your book report?"

"Jeez, forget about the book report. No, about Danny."

"Yeah."

"You're good at making friends, Alex." Janey says.

"Depends on what you call a friend." Alex says.

Janey ignores him. "You'll be nice to Danny, won't you? Tommy says that lots of people won't be and I understand why but you won't do that, right?"

"'Course I'll be nice to him." Alex says with conviction. Janey likes inflection. It convinces her of things.

"Good. And remember you said you'd help." She adds.

 _Help_  is the word Janey uses.  _Leech_  is Reilly's preferred word of choice. "'Course, I will, Janey."

Janey nods but doesn't move away from the car. It is still early enough that there are people out. A teenage boy walks his dog right past them and turns to look at Janey as he goes.

"What cake did you bring?" Janey asks.

"It was some pistachio thing. Your mom ordered it."

"Oh. Tommy says Danny likes tiramisu." Janey says stiffly.

"Tommy said that?" Alex is amazed, to say the least.

"Yeah… I know. I was surprised too, but he was convinced. Mom wouldn't order it though."

Down the road, someone slams a car door and Alex takes it as his cue to push off the hood. "I gotta go. See you Tuesday."

"Yeah, alright." She wanders onto the pavement as he gets in and starts the engine. Tall for her age, she stands with an air of self-possession that Alex sometimes sees in miserable teenagers. Arms folded across her chest, she doesn't wave as Alex drives away.


	2. Chapter 2

The Jeep is fuelled up and Alex stands out in the humidity, listening to the  _tic tic_  of the engine cooling.

Janey has sent him a picture of a bouquet of calla lilies and tulips with the caption:  _And he also brought flowers._  She doesn't bother with emoticons.

Alex resists the urge to laugh. It is an absurd feeling, to be so attuned to Janey's hurt and at the same time, feel intensely sorry for Danny Cooper. At this point, there isn't anything Danny can do to make things better. If his expressions were any indication, he is having a shittier day than Janey.

Alex buries the phone into his pocket and is locking the car when the front door opens and Reilly plops down on the front step.

"Hanging out with underage girls again?" She asks. Her voice is just light-hearted enough. Alex used to think that he was insane for thinking that there is an unsettling hostility to things that Reilly does, the sort that make Alex wish that they didn't live in the same house. Not that they will be for much longer.

"Hello?" she says, even though it's barely been three seconds since she spoke.

Alex prays to the heavens for patience. She is by no means the only person who would say something like that to him – he is well-acquainted with assholes and in the lovely, tiny town of Prospect, they're hard to avoid - but she is the only one that he simultaneously loves and hates so much. He doesn't think he'll miss her much when she's gone.

"What goes on in that head of yours, Alex?" She asks conversationally.

"Nothing you'd be interested in." Alex says.

"I'll bet." Reilly says. "I mean, what do you even think about? How to dispose of Taylor Whitfield's body without her dad finding out? How to murder your dad? I mean, the sheer fucking…" her voice is getting pensive now. "Vapidity of it all."

"What all?" Alex asks with a grin.

Reilly falls for it. "You, for fuck's sake. Do you even want to do anything with your life?"

Alex feels a small twinge of happiness somewhere deep inside. "Sure. I'm trying to figure out how to go to college without dumping my boyfriend."

"Oh, fuck you." Reilly snaps, but there is no real venom there. Alex doesn't aspire to make Reilly truly angry because that never works in anybody's favour. "So, you still gonna drive Janey Cooper to her tutor's now that big bro is back?"

Alex looks down at her. She looks right back. The three years he has on her often feel pretty useless. "Maybe." Alex says.

Reilly laughs. "Right." She starts scrolling through the messages on her phone. "I've heard Danny Cooper's a class A asshole."

He is inclined to agree but he doesn't say anything. He's not unfair enough to judge Danny for being drunk.

Reilly hammers away at the keys of her blackberry and his own phone buzzes in his pocket thrice. He studiously ignores it, standing patiently because he knows that Reilly isn't just here for nothing. The pie has made it plenty clear that her passive-aggression is quite high today. "I'm going now." Alex says with just the right amount of firmness to get her talking.

He makes it to the front step before she speaks. "How do you think it'll be?"

Alex almost sighs. "What?"

"San Francisco. Mom." Reilly says.

Alex despises her, he really does – almost as much as she despises him. But he despises her most when she thinks she is entitled to simultaneously be a bitch and his little sister. He turns to her and says, "It'll be fine."

"Well, thanks a fuckton, big bro." she snarls. "That's just what I needed to hear."

It being her last night and all, Alex changes up the script a little and gives her what will probably make her happiest. Instead of waiting in silence like he usually would, he says, "Well, there you go then."

Reilly just stares at him with an expression that speaks such volumes of degradation, it almost hurts. "You think you deserve to go, don't you?"

Laughter erupts from Alex and he runs his hand through his hair, tugs at it until it hurts.

"I'm not wrong."

"Why do you keep bringing it up?"

"Because you fucking said it!" she says loudly.

It doesn't matter how hard Alex works to keep his mouth shut. The one time he didn't, he's still paying for it. "Yeah, and you said a lot of things too. I don't keep bringing them up."

"You're always thinking about it. I know you are. I can see it in your face." Reilly says.

"No, you can't, Reilly. So just stop." Alex says flatly. He isn't sure he can handle such large concentrations of drama on a Thursday.

Her mouth is set in a frown and her voice is hard when she says, "It's time you forgot about Mom. There's no point in thinking about it all the time."

"Very good at that, aren't you?" Alex says childishly.  _Christ_.

"Just forget about it."

"Dad cheated. He's just waiting to escort us single file out of this house so that he can start on Family 2.0." Alex says flatly. He has perfected the art of keeping the brittleness out of his voice when they turn to this topic. His voice almost never breaks on these words anymore. "He's halfway done."

"Stop bringing up things that don't matter. None of it matters anymore." Reilly says exasperatedly.

"It matters." Alex says. "There was something there before everything went to shit."

This much, at least, he knows with certainty. Jack may have been a lay-about but they were still a family. These days, Jack is in charge of everything and Alex understands, with viciousness, that Jack loves Lily so much because she makes him feel more like a man, steps aside even though she is better at running things than Jack. His mom's only mistake was that she couldn't bear incompetence.

And that is a fact Alex keeps close to his heart. On those days when he is thinking about easing into this… new system, he remembers that the cause of all of it, is his Dad's damaged ego. And he doesn't plan on forgetting that anytime soon.

"Fine, whatever. I tried." Reilly says with a shrug that is almost cruelly indifferent.

No, you didn't, is what Alex wants to stay. But he's gone off script enough for one night. "We'll leave at nine." He says and goes back inside.

* * *

By the time they hit the road leading out of town and up north toward Silver City, Reilly is catatonic in the passenger seat. Three-quarters of the things that she owns are in the back, packed with a frightening neatness that usually only makes itself known when she is especially focused on something.

And she is definitely focused on something. It is clear from the extra slump in her shoulders that she didn't sleep the night before and Alex doesn't like the thought of her sleeping on a plane, all alone.

It's easy to forget sometimes that Reilly is just a kid – not that different from him, really. Except for the small distinction that perhaps, the three years he has on her have taught him something.

On those not-so-rare occasions when Reilly acts like she did the night before, Alex is reminded of the fact that no matter how unlikely it seems to both of them, he is older than her. Neither of them is under the impression that he's any better at handling things but at least, he knows when to keep his mouth shut.

Not that it's done him much good. He glances at Reilly dozing in the passenger seat, temple knocking against the glass each time they pass a rough patch of road.

His phone vibrates in his pocket again. Alex ignores it until it starts ringing. Janey never calls and there's really only one other person who'd be calling him at ten in the morning. Alex pulls the phone out of his pocket. "What, Noreen? I'm driving."

He hears a huff of breath on the line. "Morning to you too," she says drily. "As much as I hate to be the bearer of good news, Taylor Whitfield got hired again. Her dad's buying us a new espresso machine, hoo-fucking-ray. She's taking your shift today. Congratulations on your day off, I hope you have a shitty one."

"Cool, thanks." Alex says, smiling for the first time all morning.

"Yeah, thank me later. I've got a surprise I think you'll love." Noreen says.

He doesn't ask what, because that would be met with a withering  _It's a surprise, dipshit_. So he says goodbye and with a minimum of apprehension, hangs up.

* * *

Alex is standing next to the parked car. Reilly sits on the hood and sips her latte. Her brown-blonde hair is a mess, as usual but sitting there, she looks young and healthy.

Away from Prospect, the number of cars in the parking lot befuddles Alex. It had taken him twenty minutes to find a dolly for the luggage, buy a coffee and bring it back to Reilly. The crowds are too big, the baristas dauntingly efficient and he'd felt a peculiar sense of dissonance, standing in the midst of so many people he'd never seen before and would never see again. Not like Prospect, nothing like that.

His only use really seems to be to sit with Reilly as she sucks down a coffee like her life depends on it.

It's a droll task, to sit in silence and wonder what kind of things people usually say to each other at this point. She's going to get up as soon as she is finished with her coffee and Alex, for the life of him, cannot think of one thing to say.

Even if he could have, the opportunity slips away. Reilly's phone barely utters one ring before she snatches it up. "Hey." she says. "What's up?"

Reilly's warm, private grin is proof enough that it is Fletcher. Alex looks down at his own phone, Janey's messages still bolded and unread. He considers opening them but the thought makes him feel an absurd tightening somewhere in the vicinity of his gut.

For now, it isn't worth thinking about. It has been a long time since Alex has consciously thought about just  _why_  he spends so much time around the Coopers. There are things in place, systems that he's made and he isn't going to give them up. Danny Cooper is simply another variable in the mix, someone with his own problems and insecurities. Alex just has to make sure that those insecurities don't fuck up his own setup.

This is one thing that Alex is firm about. He means it when he says that he will not forget. But it is tiring, this whole business of never forgetting, of constantly reminding himself that he is sharing a house with class-A assholes. The Coopers keep him sane. Make him feel useful. Not like To-Be-Step-Child No. 1, waiting to be shuttled out through the front door when the time is just right.

He doesn't want to be like Reilly and he especially doesn't want to be like his father. Both of them making him pay for not moving past a divorce like it was a scrape to the knee. He remembers his father's foot maliciously planted in the vegetable garden, the pie burnt and sodden in the sink.

He is keen, yes, on hating his father for stealing his center of gravity from him. It's a hobby, he likes to think. A quest to reclaim his center and keep his moral compass pointing safely north. A hobby-quest.

He glances at Reilly and the grin on her face makes it clear that she is reveling in ordinary talk. Any talk that serves as a distraction from what really needs to be talked about – that's what makes Reilly happy. She pauses and for a while, doesn't say anything.

It takes Alex a moment to consider that perhaps Fletcher isn't saying anything. He tries his best to look like he doesn't care, not listening, not listening but Reilly stares down at her coffee cup, slowly twisting it counter-clockwise atop her knee. He thinks for a second that perhaps there are tears in her eyes but he doesn't glance back to check.

Fletcher is a quiet person, although he can really talk shit when it comes to his cycling. Sometimes Alex thinks that his silence comforts Reilly. Now, he is almost certain that it is hurting her.

Alex doesn't know why he does it. Probably because it suddenly occurs to him that he still doesn't know what to say to his sister as she leaves. A goodbye feels so painfully pointless. So he turns to her and taps his watch.

Reilly laughs suddenly into the phone, her smile so wide that he actually sees tears in her eyes. Either Fletcher just said something very funny or his sister is about to lose it.

Alex decides that his decision is a good one. He stands up and takes the empty cup from her.

She looks at Alex, unwaveringly as if she knows exactly what he is thinking. She takes her time standing up, glaring at him the whole time.

Hanging up without a goodbye, she mumbles: "Christ, you're such a fucking muppet, Alex." This is as grateful as Reilly gets.

Alex merely hands her the rucksack. For a second, she just looks at him. But Alex knows she won't say anything.

He waits until she pulls the rucksack on then hugs her close and kisses her for good measure, just a little peck on the head. She is small and warm against him, his little sister. Alex hears himself say 'goodbye' from a distance and he sees her lips form the words 'See you.' All he can focus on is the fact that Reilly is catching his eye. Still hopeful? No. She thinks she tried. She's certain of it.

He watches her walk away until she disappears into the terminal.

_That's all, folks._

She is unlikely to call and even if she does, they won't exchange more than a few words. By the time she comes back, it will be barely a week before she has to go to college. Alex used to think that a lot could happen in a week but when it's him and Reilly, nothing can happen in a week. Nothing will happen in a week. Then barring a couple of holidays, they won't see each other for four years.

It feels like the glorious end of an era and Alex cannot help the smile on his face, nor can he reconcile that smile with the feeling of something very heavy pressing on his chest.


	3. Chapter 3

A cool breeze has lightened the day, lessened the glare and set Alex's head straight by the time he reaches Prospect. It is nearly eleven and the heaviness in his chest feels like a distant memory as long as he works on keeping it that way.

And he intends on doing so. By the time it is noon, he has stopped by the house to take a shower and change out of last night's clothes, bought bagels and coffee and is parked in front of Benji's house.

The front door, made of a heavy wood with colourful glass panes set into it, is unlocked and unlatched. Alex lets himself in and toes his shoes off.

The walls around him are lined with framed pictures of a dark-skinned woman and boy, the boy in his late teens. Occasionally, a handsome but tight-lipped man makes an appearance but never in the same picture as the boy.

Alex finds Nelly in the kitchen, sipping from a glass of wine. The kitchen smells of something nutty and Alex leans against the doorframe, breathes it in slowly.

She smiles without looking away from her glass. "Is that who I think it is?"

"Hi, Mrs. Pearce." Alex says.

She turns to him with a distracted smile. Alex pulls out a chair but before he can sit, Nelly waves him away. "I won't be very good company today, Alex. Go on, he's upstairs."

"Only if I get a slice of what you're making." Alex says. The words, like most words that come out of Alex's mouth, lack the requisite charm and joviality and fizzle out in the air between them.

Nelly smiles kindly at him and Alex smiles back. She suddenly blinks and asks, "Reilly left today, didn't she? How is she?"

The question is perhaps the best way to get him out of the kitchen, although he knows that that isn't Nelly's intention. Alex departs with a dry, "She'll be fine."

The upstairs is cool and Alex lets himself into Benji's room. The scent of marinara hangs in the air and an empty bowl with last night's dinner crusted to the bottom sits on Benji's bedside table.

It's a big room, nearly three times the size of Alex's bedroom and unlike his room, a decisive mess. The only part of the room not in chaos is the desk.

The room is chilly and goosebumps rise on his arms as he crosses to the curtains and yanks them open.

"Jesus Christ. Somebody likes to make an entrance." Benji mumbles from underneath a mound of blankets.

"Thought I'd drop by." Alex says, already smiling for some reason. There is a warm thrum in his stomach, the sort that comes partly from being near someone familiar and mostly from being sort of turned on. Alex sets the paper bag on the bedside table and unceremoniously yanks the blankets off Benji.

Benji curls into the fetal position, lying at the very epicentre of the wrinkles in the sheets, clad in boxers and a t-shirt. He cracks open an eye and stares unwaveringly at Alex. "So fucking chipper. I like you better when you're miserable." he mutters.

Alex thinks that the comment is perfectly absurd, considering that nobody with two eyes would ever use the word chipper to describe him at any point in his life – past, present or future. "I'm sure Reilly agrees." he says anyway.

Benji snorts and with his eyes clenched shut, he blindly reaches for Alex and tugs until he relents and flops into bed next to him.

Eyes closed, Benji stretches luxuriously against him. "Where's the better-looking McKinley then?"

"Where she's supposed to be." Alex says. The warmth from the bed seeps slowly all around him, vanishing the goosebumps from his arm. Slowly but steadily, his body forms an impression in the blankets until he is lying comfortably among the sheets, cucooned in the scent of some deodorant laced impeccably with the scent of Benji.

Five years of maturing have made Benji's face sharper than that of the boy in the picture. He is taller than Alex but younger than him by a year.

Benji sidles closer and his hand is an insidious warmth that smooths its way under the hem of Alex's shirt and up until his palm rests flat against his ribs.

"Whatcha thinking?" he asks as he turns on his side to face Alex.

"What Nelly'll think if she comes up here." Alex says, without any bite.

"Nothing, probably. We're the boring kind of homos, remember?" Benji says.

"How'd it go yesterday?" Alex says with a smile.

Benji snorts. "Very well, obviously." he says and with a burst of energy that is incongruous with the looseness of his limbs, he rolls off the bed into an upright position and into a full-body stretch.

He stands by the foot of the bed for a few moments before reaching over and smacking Alex on the leg. "Jesus, frickin' heathens, I swear." He says as he yanks Alex's boots off his feet and flings them onto the floor.

Benji's body still has the scrawniness of his teenage years, despite his best efforts to convert it into brawn. He is something of a vain creature but he is good for Alex's ego.

"C'mere." Alex says and pulls the sheets up.

"Says the asshole who took a shower before coming over. Lemme at least brush my teeth."

"Hurry." Alex calls after him.

"Fuck off. My mom's downstairs." Benji says and disappears into the ensuite bathroom.

The AC is on full-blast and as Alex pulls the sheets up to his neck, he decides that he's not going to have a miserable day today. It's as simple as that. Reilly's leaving is simply a complication removed and the heaviness in his chest is a memory discarded somewhere near Silver City. All that remains now is a sort of relief.

There's a host of possibilities opening up in front of him; small, inconsequential possibilities but possibilities, nonetheless. The possibility of mentioning Benji's name at the dinner table without getting smirked at, that's one.

"What are you smiling about?" Benji asks from the bathroom doorway. He has pulled on track pants and is scrubbing a towel across his face as he drops into the chair by his desk.

"Reilly leaving."

"I'm glad you're not my brother." Benji says as the computer comes off hibernate.

"I'll bet." Alex says without any conviction. He eyes Benji for a moment then gets off the bed.

Benji spins around his chair, eyebrows raised high. "Do I get a sympathy hug now?" he says, scowling.

"Do you want one?" Alex says, standing over him.

Benji just gives him a supremely skeptical look.

Alex stares until the look drops and something more muted takes its place.

"It's a fucking road trip. Christ, from the way she's acting, you'd think I'd decided to join the Westboro Baptist Church." Benji says and spins back around to face the computer.

Alex looks over Benji's shoulder as he clicks through a series of browser windows – everything from bit torrents to Reuters to porn. He winds his fingers through Benji's close-cropped hair, runs his thumb over his scalp and tugs softly on the locks until he can feel him suppressing a shiver.

"Fuck off, will you?" Benji mutters.

"She'll get over it."Alex says. "Nobody wants a 20 year old languishing upstairs."

He skates his fingers lightly over the vertebrae at the apex of Benji's spine, does it softly and slowly until Benji groans in frustration. "Seriously, fuck off."

Alex relents, pleased with himself.

Benji glances up at him, his face set into a frown. "Where's my coffee?" he says.

"You're too grumpy today." Alex says finally.

Benji does a double-take that is almost real. "Well, look who's talking."

Alex tugs at Benji's collar until he stands. This close, Alex can see each and every one of the moles that dot the left side of his jaw and stipple their way down his neck and all over his chest. "Remind me why you're going on a road trip again."

"Because I have a fucking gorgeous car that I practically made with my own two hands." Benji says.

Alex nudges him toward the bed, a gentle heat thrumming somewhere in the pit of his stomach. "And what does that have to do with anything?"

"Wow, having this conversation that we've had about five times already is turning me on so much." Benji says, his voice wry.

He sits heavily on the bed and Alex kneels between his parted legs, runs his hands over Benji's trousers. "You're miserable today. Seriously? Are you trying to tell me something?"

Benji looks at him with an almost-smile at the corner of his lips. "Yeah, I'm afraid I'm incredibly serious about this road-trip." he says quietly.

"I'm wounded." Alex says with a grin. Benji just brings his legs together until they're pressed snug around Alex's ribs.

"You do realize that it would solve all my problems if you just came with." Benji says.

Alex realizes now that they really are recycling old conversations today. His thumb taps Benji's knee and he knows that if Benji was feeling determined, he would have already brought his hands to a stop.

"Oh, yes. Responsibilities." Benji says.

"Maybe you should get some." Alex says kindly.

Benji gapes at him with mock-affront. "I have lots of responsibilities." he says. "I keep my neurotic mom happy, I think about what to do with my life, I work on my car, I avoid my dad, I work, I hang out with you."

"Obligations." Alex says.

"Hanging out with you isn't." Benji says.

"Hm, noted." Alex

"What would you do if I went off and fucked someone else?" Benji asks.

Alex shrugs. "Wonder how you found another gay guy in Prospect."

Benji stares over his head, frowning. "I sound like a kid." he says quietly.

"Yes, you do." Alex says, softening his words with a kiss to Benji's knuckle.

"I need to grow up." Benji says, as if he's just now come to the realization.

"You're perfect." Alex says and takes a token amount of pleasure in seeing the smile at the corner of Benji's mouth.

"Nobody asked you." Benji says but his words lack the requisite edge. "Besides, you're full of shit."

Alex just grins at him. It's been a week since he last saw Benji and his face already hurts from smiling too much. There is something odd here, about how little he smiles during the week and how he can't stop when he's around Benji. Something that occasionally makes him feel bad for all the ways in which he doesn't give Benji what he wants.

"Speaking of gay guys in Prospect…" Benji says with a grin.

Alex moves up to sit beside him on the bed. "He's alright." Alex says. "Mildly an asshole. But he was sort of drunk, so…"

Benji raises an eyebrow, impressed. "Huh. Ballsy. When do I get to meet him?"

"Any time you like. Though you'd have to find him first." Alex says as he lies back on the bed.

Benji snorts. "Judging by our track record, he should be hanging around Trevor's garage."

"You tell him you're quitting yet?"

"Who, Trevor? Fuck no. I want my paycheck before I tell him. He'll probably find an excuse to hold onto it.  _Asshole_." Benji declares and lies back, elbowing Alex aside. "So, Keeper of Coopers, what's the plan?"

Alex turns his head to look at Benji. There really isn't any way to answer the question without once again clarifying for Benji that his relationship with the Coopers is as absurd as Benji already knows it is. There are lots of things about the Coopers that Benji doesn't want to understand. "Your coffee's getting cold." Alex says, nudging Benji in the ribs.

"So is yours." Benji says with a grin. He looks at Alex for a second longer then sighing, sits up. "Alright, fine."

Alex follows suit and watches as Benji upends a sugar packet into his own coffee, before handing Alex his Styrofoam cup. "Thanks."

"Hm." Benji says as he bites into his own bagel with relish.

Alex knows Benji isn't angry, he never is but it doesn't make him feel any better. Not when the road-trip was a mere possibility two months ago but has now somehow become a certainty. He itches to ask Benji if he's  _really_  going but he knows he won't ask.

By Alex's own doing, this plan has never included him, not when everything he does, from working at Trevor's to driving Janey to her tutor's serves to make his life in Prospect easier. Prospect is it, for him. There is nowhere outside of it where he could make anything of himself – not without a degree, which he can't afford.

"Stop thinking so loud." Benji says. He has crossed his legs under him and is settling himself against Alex, as if this is the sort of thing they ever get to do.

It's rare that Benji's dad leaving town ever coincides with any mornings on which they're both free long enough to sleep till noon and lounge around even longer. Usually, it's a handjob in the employee's bathroom tucked at the back of Trevor's garage. Or Alex's bed, if they're ever lucky enough that Lily is on-call, Jack is asleep and Reilly is out with Fletcher on the same night.

Alex winds his fingers through Benji's hair, pulls him close and kisses him hard, just because he can. He feels Benji's smile against his mouth then a drag of tongue against his lip. It only lasts for a few seconds at best before Benji pulls away, grinning and says, "You didn't go straight for the pants. I'm impressed."

" _Fuck_  you." Alex says and drains the coffee from his cup. "You're a dick. I never go straight for the pants."

"Yeah, you're a proper romantic, godammit." Benji says. His grin is impish, all traces of a frown gone from his face. "Come on, let's play Skyrim. Mom'll be gone by three."


	4. Chapter 4

"A cookie."

"At the bottom?" Alex asks.

"Yeah, a cookie at the bottom of the cup  _before_  you pour the mocha in." She says. Her name is Suzie and she is almost nineteen and there's no good reason Alex knows this, except that he works at Donut.

Beside him, Noreen has already reached for the pastry case and is working hard to suppress an eye-roll as she plucks the cookie off the tray.

"You'll have to pay for that." Alex says to Suzie.

"I only want half of it."

Noreen turns away with an eyeroll.

"Half in the cup and half on the side." Alex says. "That alright?"

"No. I just want half in the cup. You can throw away the rest."

"You still have to pay for the whole cookie." Alex says.

Suzie looks at Alex like he's gone insane. "But I only want half?"

Alex stares at her and she stares right back. "Sorry, that's not really how it works. You've gotta pay for the whole cookie."

"Well, the whole cookie isn't going to fit in my cup, is it?" Suzie says.

"We can break it into pieces for you."

"No, half a cookie. Else it doesn't taste right."

"Then half on the side  _or_  I could throw the other half away. Either way, you've gotta pay for the whole cookie, miss."

If Alex were someone else, he would wonder at the path that had led him to this conversation. But he doesn't, because he's standing across a counter from a freckled girl named Suzie who wants a cookie at the bottom of her medium mocha.

Alex doesn't make a habit of judging other people's poor choice in modified beverages. He expects it and he accommodates it, because he works at Donut, where the menu-board is fifteen years old and they make too much of their money off the Captain Crunch frappuccinos that the Starbucks across town won't make because nobody who wants a Captain Crunch frappuccino actually has a recipe for a Captain Crunch frappuccino.

That's alright, though. That's the way the world works and Alex is alright with that.

As it is, Suzie stares at him for a good twenty seconds – right in the eyes – before she finally pulls her wallet out of her bag. Alex smiles at her as he takes the money and hands her back the receipt.

"Thanks. That'll be two minutes." Alex says.

Suzie doesn't outright tell Alex to go fuck himself, she just mutters it under her breath.

* * *

The walls of Donut are lined with pictures of the high school football team, debate team and drama team. They've got ten two-seater tables and the only thing that rescues the whole set-up from bleakness is teal paint on the walls.

Noreen works there because she hates her life, Taylor works there because she is bored. Alex is fairly certain he is the only one who likes working at Donut because on those rare occasions when it is allowed to exist, the order of it all soothes him.

He has perfected the art of not questioning things too much while on the clock. It's easy to go along once things get going and this particular 'thing' has been going for eight months.

"I got it." Taylor declares, barging out of the backroom. An hour has passed since Suzie-with-the-half-cookie left and they've had a whopping five customers in the meantime.

"About time." Alex says.

Noreen has made herself a vanilla latte and is leaning against the counter, sipping from it as she watches the two of them.

"The corset took me a week to find. Looks good, doesn't it?" Taylor says as she hands Alex the picture and ducks out from under the counter.

It shows Taylor as Lady Macbeth, heavy on the eye-make up and with her hair in a five-inch tall poof. In the backdrop is a stage that still looks the same as it did four years ago. Alex looks at it in mild amusement. Taylor has a knack for the theatrics and Janey had told him that she'd been good as Lady Macbeth.

Taylor drags a chair to the wall and climbs onto it. Alex has already hammered a nail into the wall and hands the picture to her.

All the pictures on the walls, barring the one of the 1996 football team, are Taylor's additions. Without her around, Alex and Noreen could easily go hours without talking. Alex likes Taylor, he'd probably like her more if she wasn't Trevor's daughter. Then again, he wouldn't have a job at the garage if she wasn't Trevor's daughter.

"Little to the left." Noreen says from the counter.

Taylor adjusts the picture then hops off the chair.

"Right then." Noreen says. "I'm leaving."

"Your shift's not over yet." Alex says.

Taylor shoots him a sidelong glance as she ties her apron.

He'd almost forgotten about the surprise but as he sees Noreen's grin, he gets it. She's hired someone new.

"It isn't another high school kid, is it?" Alex asks, but he is already thinking about when he was fifteen and used to believe that acknowledging the worst possible scenario ensured that it could never, ever occur. Just thinking about it rendered it immediately impossible.

So he thinks it.  _Noreen hired another teenager_.

There.

"Noreen trained him and all. It only took about two days, he's not bad." Taylor says.

She's leaning against the counter, chin in hand with a languid smile on her face. On its own, it is nothing special but then she glances at Alex and the dimple in her cheek becomes more pronounced and… Jesus, she's actually excited.

"Oh." Alex says and one glance at Noreen confirms it.

 _Danny Cooper works at Donut_ , he thinks but too late.

* * *

Danny, as he is tying his apron, catches Alex's eye and nods a curt, perfunctory nod. Alex blinks in response, not clear on why it's an occasion for such seriousness.

At the till, Danny works quietly and efficiently, like he has done this before and done it often. He doesn't smell anything like booze but that doesn't make Alex feel any better. Not yet.

When it comes – because it's bound to come - Alex is mostly prepared for it.

"You look a lot like your brother, you know," Taylor says. Phone in one hand, pen in the other, she leans over a notebook on the counter, outlining an essay on why capitalism does not work.

They've picked up to about twenty customers in an hour and Danny has just handed someone their drink. He watches them leave then says, "Regrettably."

Alex has switched off their sole oven and is emptying the pastry case.

Taylor's dimpled smile makes a reappearance and despite how perfectly innocuous it is, it rarely means anything good. Eight months have taught Alex that it's usually better to join the conversation early so that if he has to deflect her, it isn't so painfully obvious.

"He told me he'd decided on an art college." Alex says.

"He told  _you_  that?" Danny glances over at Alex. Absurdly, it is the first time it occurs to Alex that maybe Danny Cooper does not like him. It's not a situation he's often in and blinking, he looks away.

"He doesn't look like the sort of kid who'd go to an art college." Taylor says. It's less her words and more her tone that makes the implication of her words so  _obvious_.

Danny's smile is stiff and graciously, he says, "No, I guess that'd be me."

"You said it, not me." Taylor says and laughs.

Danny actually chuckles and for a moment, it's easy to pretend that Taylor is being friendly.

"You know, you shouldn't feel bad. Practically everyone on the cheerleading squad is a borderline bisexual, anyway." Taylor adds breezily.

Danny smirks. " _Really?_  I must have gone to a different high school then."

"No, it's the same." She says and looks to Alex for affirmation.

"Same high school." Alex supplies.

Danny doesn't even spare him a glance. It amuses Alex that he can be so easily rendered invisible by Danny Cooper when there are so many things they share that Danny doesn't even know about.

Sometimes Alex thinks things and he can trace them right back to the first time Mr. Cooper had  _really_  talked to him.

The first time Alex had been to the Coopers, it had been because Mr. Cooper wanted help with the shed. Alex hadn't known it then but he'd been purposefully directed to the bathroom closest to Danny's old room. And drying his hands on his jeans, he'd looked into the room and understood what he was looking at.

He'd looked because those were the days before he'd woken up in bed with Benji, warm and hungover, convinced that his life would change if he just closed that distance between them and kissed Benji. Back then, it took everything to hold his own against Benji and his words and his hands.

Those days, his chest always felt like a boulder had taken permanent residence there. He'd find it hard to breathe sometimes, late at night, when he would look at the facts and realize that he'd lost his mother to a man as inconsequential as Jack.

He didn't know what he'd expected from the room. Maybe a disembodied voice telling him what to do next time Benji grabbed his head – as he was annoyingly wont to do – so that his thumb fit perfectly in the dip at the base of Alex's skull.

"Me and Dottie, we know everyone knows." Mr. Cooper had said, arms folded. His voice had been subdued but in that moment, he was harrowed and wise. And Alex saw something of himself in him; through a trick of perception, felt as if they are talking about a dead son and not a gay one.

"There's just one thing I expect others to understand. Limits, son. It's how the world goes round. What stops a man from snapping your neck in the street? If it's men today, it'll be children tomorrow. Brothers and sisters, the next day. Limits. I will have nothing less."

He had said it with a terrifying finality, as if the subject would never come up ever again. But it did, later on.

Alex hadn't known it then and had gone back home, hands trembling. For those few minutes, he'd forgotten that Danny Cooper was alive and well, a few hours drive away. That he was exactly like Alex.

He hadn't been able to sleep that night, nauseous with the knowledge that he would go back. That after so many days of tumult, he had felt the earth go still beneath his feet on hearing Mr. Cooper's words.

Nothing else made sense then. Not Reilly, not Jack, not Benji and the things he made Alex feel.

 _Limits_. That is all.

* * *

Grocery shopping has been Alex's job since before the divorce. Every now and then, Lily tries to convince him to give her the list but for the most part, it is indisputably Alex's job.

Alex doesn't put it past her to simply snatch the list from his wallet so he takes certain precautions. He doesn't write it down anymore and memorizes each and every item. He goes every Monday so that his father can't fuck up the process by bringing home the wrong brand of milk, just because Alex was a day late.

It's a good system, a process that necessitates and encourages competence.

Alex has just finished and is unlocking the car when his phone rings. The only reason Noreen would ever call this late is if someone had left an oven on and burnt Donut down. Frowning, Alex shifts both grocery bags into one hand and fishes the phone out of his pocket.

It is Reilly. Vigilantly, Alex thinks:  _she's still in Silver City_.

He picks up. "Hello?"

"Hey." Reilly says.

"What's wrong?"

There is a pause. "What're you up to?"

"I should be asking you that. How's San Francisco?" Alex asks.

"It's good." Reilly says. Her response is so non-committal that Alex is suddenly convinced that she didn't get on the plane.

He sets the grocery bags down and forces himself to stand still in the warm, humid night. "What's wrong?" he asks again.

There is a long pause. "I don't feel so great."

 _What the fuck does that mean?_  Alex wants to ask. "How's Mom?"

Reilly laughs suddenly. "Fucking perfect, Alex." She sounds amazed. "She looks great. I don't recognize her."

Alex looks down at his boots and tries to keep up with the thread of this conversation. "Where are you?"

"Her apartment." Reilly says and laughs a disbelieving laugh.

"What? What's funny?"

"It's amazing. It's got a kitchen island and mahogany baseboards and hand-scraped wooden floorboards-"

Alex holds the phone away from his ear and forces himself to unlock the car door even though in that precise moment, he doesn't really know what he's doing. His thoughts seem to have momentarily left him and foolishly, pathetically, he brings the phone to his ear just in time to hear Reilly say: "-and a dog."

"She has a dog?"

"Yeah, it's a collie." Her voice drops as if someone is nearby and the thought strikes Alex suddenly and starkly; Reilly could hand the phone to her at any moment and Alex might have to talk to her.

"Reilly. What do you want?" Alex asks firmly.

She doesn't miss a beat. "Jesus, what's got you so busy?" She asks snidely. He's glad that she says it because there is nothing more reassuring at the moment.

"Nothing. Just… grocery." Alex says.

Reilly laughs and he regrets having picked up the phone.

"Still playing chauffeur?" Reilly asks.

Alex looks out over the parking lot, the heat and the fumes pressing down on him from all sides. "Why are you calling?" Alex asks.

Reilly laughs now, an earnest, almost-happy laugh. "You're so predictable, you know that?" she says.

"What?" Alex asks. He can think of nothing else to say.

"I know what you were thinking at the airport." Reilly says.

Alex sighs and leans his forehead against the muggy glass of the Jeep windows. "What's that?"

"I'll call you tomorrow 'round dinner time. That all right?" Reilly says.

Alex catches sight of his reflection in the dark car window and he despises the wide-eyed look in his eye. He blinks indolently at himself and says, "Okay."

There is a long beat of silence then Reilly says, "You were right."

Alex swallows. "About what?"

"You should have come. I can hardly breathe around her." Reilly says but there is no search for commiseration in her words. Her voice is hard and brittle.

Alex cuts to the chase and says, "And you're blaming me for that?"

"I know what you were thinking at the airport." she says finally.

Alex's confusion vanishes and suddenly, he's just pissed. "What's that?" he snaps.

"That I wouldn't call." Reilly says.

"And I was wrong," Alex says through his teeth. It's just like her to think that she's being awfully clever. She probably practiced for twenty minutes before she even dialed his number.

"I won't leave you alone, you know. Your grand plan for assimilation into the Cooper clan or whatever the fuck you're doing, it's not gonna happen." Reilly says flatly.

It's less that she says it and more  _how_  she says it that makes Alex roll his eyes hard enough to hurt. "You're beginning to sound like a cartoon villain."

He cannot bear her but more than that, he can't bear himself sometimes. No wonder Reilly does this so often. He deserves it too, if all it takes to unsettle him are shitty non-sequiturs and a mere mention of his mother.

He unlocks the car and flings the groceries into the back. "Anything else?

"No. Talk to you later."

Alex hangs up.  _Grand plan for assimilation into the Cooper clan_. It's ridiculous, even for Reilly; nonsensical.

"Christ," Alex mutters as he slams the car door. As if  _assimilation_  is what he wants.


	5. Chapter 5

It's six o' clock on Tuesday evening when Alex pulls to a stop in front of the Cooper house. The dying sunlight filters weakly through the cypress trees, turns Alex's skin a pale gold and the seats a washed out grey.

He is feeling a sort of sullenness that hasn't gripped him in weeks. He can't seem to stop tapping his thumb against the door - an entire day and he still feels stuck. Things that never bother him any other day bother him today. Just the thought of Benji's stupid car makes him grit his teeth.

The passenger side door, when it opens two minutes later, does so with a crack that grates on Alex's nerves. Janey neatly folds herself into the car and exhales slowly before she glances at him.

Alex laughs softly. "You look like how I feel."

She smiles at him and looks out the window. For two minutes, as Alex takes a turn onto the road leading into town, Janey is silent.

Then she glances at him.

"Your dad been saying anything?" Alex asks.

"No," she says, her voice caustic, "Suddenly nobody's got anything to say."

Alex is on the verge of saying  _It'll be okay_ , but he doesn't. Six months isn't so long that he's forgotten the uselessness of such platitudes. "How was dinner that day?" Alex asks instead.

"Horrendous." She says under her breath. Then louder, "Horrendous. He wouldn't stop smiling, like he was having the time of his life."

"Danny?"

"Yes, Danny. Dad could barely bring himself to breathe. Tommy wouldn't stop staring at him. Mom was just pretending like he wasn't there. It just- What do I do with that?"

Alex carefully looks out over the road even though he knows every turn and bump. It takes him a moment to realize he is chewing on his lip. He forces himself to stop before asking, "Did he say how long he's staying?"

Out of the corner of his eye, he sees Janey's brow furrow. "Why does that matter? You should have seen him. He was getting off on the whole… shitstorm. Boy, he was having a grand time."

"He was probably having a bad a time as you were." Alex doesn't need to know Danny Cooper to say that much.

"Of course he was,  _obviously_  he was. He still didn't have to be an ass about it. He-" She stops abruptly and resolutely looks out the window.

Alex doesn't ask what. Janey's discomfort makes him uncomfortable, and the sight of his own knuckles white around the steering wheel makes him swallow. When did he get so clumsy at this? When did Reilly get so good at derailing him? Fuck's sake.

Janey's voice, when she finally speaks, is carefully stony. "He kept looking right through me."

That sentence hangs between them long after Alex says, "He hasn't seen you for five years."

"Through me, like I didn't exist," Janey corrects matter-of-factly.

"If I saw Reilly after five years, I wouldn't know what to do either," Alex says even though he's not sure if it's true or not.

Janey turns right back to the window.

It doesn't bother Alex that he has been relegated to speaking on Danny's behalf. He doesn't like it, but he can fill in the gaps if he has to; he's probably better qualified for it than anyone in this town.

It may bother Janey, but it's the best way for things to be, that Tommy keeps to staring and Mr. Cooper doesn't say anything. Best for Alex and best for the Coopers.

By the time Alex pulls to a stop outside Mrs. Grady's apartment building, Janey has relaxed in her seat, and says: "I was barely ten. I guess that doesn't even make me a part of this."

Alex laughs. "You know you're a part of it."

Subdued, Janey smiles to herself. "Whether I want to be or not?"

"Yeah, something like that."

"You get it, huh?" Janey says. She looks him in the eye, which is rare for her.

"Yeah, I do," Alex says.

Reilly and Jack; he is of them and they are of him. And he doesn't question it. All he can do is find a way to make the painful parts a bit less painful. The rest he will manage,  _is_  managing – if he can keep it safe.

He isn't stupid. He knows the Coopers, hollow and scared and resilient, are just like him. And he knows that whatever shaky foundation Mr. Cooper laid down the first time they talked cannot withstand Danny's presence.

Alex knows what he is to the Coopers and he doesn't think it often but he knows.  _Replacement_. But Alex has talked to Danny and he knows people like him. People like Reilly, who like to set things on fire and watch them burn.

The breath in his chest eases, his grip on the wheel slackens. He knows what he's doing, he's done it before. He's managed Jack; he can survive Danny too.

* * *

By 6.20, Alex is parked in the dirt lot behind Donut. It's big enough for ten cars, but this time of day, there are only two.

Leaning against the side of his Jeep, Alex watches as Taylor parks her lime green Cherokee beside him. It seems his timing is off by about ten minutes.

"Tell me you're here to take my shift," she says as she gets out of her car.

"I'm not."

"Oh, fuck you then."

"Forgot to say, congratulations on getting rehired," Alex says with a grin.

"I'll cherish that condescending, shit-eating smile forever," she says drily as she rounds her car. "So did Reilly decide on a college yet?"

Alex nods half-heartedly. It's not uncharacteristic of her to bring Reilly up often. He is mostly sure that Reilly has spent most of her high school years getting smirked at by Taylor Whitfield. Prospect may be a boring town, but it's a boring town with status quo and a girl like Reilly, loud-mouthed and unapologetic, doesn't fit. She's not soft enough or smiley enough.

Reilly's the sort of girl who turns boys down without any excuses, with absolute zero mentions of Fletcher. Just says No, to boys with big mouths and little dicks who go on to make her life hell.

She's not made for Prospect. Not like him. Alex is accustomed to giving people what they ask for, only partly because he cannot afford to do anything else.

He smiles at Taylor, even though he's not in the mood. "She's got a scholarship to New Mexico Tech."

"She always was pretty smart," Taylor says. "Well, you know what I mean…"

"Yeah, smarter than a lot of girls I know," Alex says, half-joking, even though he shouldn't.

" _So_  smooth." She says then presses the key fob to lock her car. "Anyway, Kieren's done with his program so he should be back in a couple of days."

"Cool," Alex says.

With a raised eyebrow, she says, "Cheer up, Alex. He's not putting you out of a job."

"I know," Alex says flatly.

"Good, then. I'll see you tomorrow. Later." She says.

* * *

By the time Danny's shift ends, Alex has lit a cigarette. It's not something he does often but then again, it's not often that he talks to gay guys that aren't Benji. It's a special occasion, he likes to think. A delicious, steely calm has settled in his nerves, the sort that comes with doing something that needs to be done.

The back door to Donut opens and even though Alex knows he will, he is still surprised when Danny stops by him. His hair is tousled but beyond that, he is the image of composure.

"Hey," Alex says. He's got his friendly smile on - the quiet, unassuming one he dons for work. "Want one?"

Danny's eyes flick from Alex's face to the cigarette a grand total of three times before he finally takes it. He takes the lighter from Alex and looks around the lot as he lights the cigarette.

"What?" Alex asks.

He smiles as if at a private joke. The condescension is awfully familiar. "Hanging in dark places in a hick town isn't really my thing, no offense."

"I didn't bring my homophobe friends today," Alex says. It isn't funny and Danny doesn't laugh.

"Wouldn't want your homophobe friends to know you're here either," Danny says and even though Alex wasn't talking about the Coopers, it's clear that Danny is. The smile is still in place.

"It doesn't matter either way," Alex says with a breezy smile.

Danny looks at him for a moment before saying, "So, am I correct in assuming that Tommy grew up to be a useless human being?"

The derision in that question doesn't really surprise Alex. "No, he's alright." He means to say more, but one look from Danny ensures him that he isn't interested in what he has to say.

"He used to hide his drawings from Mom and Dad, you know. He was convinced they would disapprove." Danny says.

For a moment, they stare at each other, neither of them sure why Danny just said that. Alex looks away first, taps the ash off his forgotten cigarette and takes a long, long drag.

When he glances back, Danny is still looking, mouth tight.

"Did they?" Alex asks.

"You'd know more about it than me," Danny says. "I like to think I made the job a little easier for him. After all, it's hard to live up to a disappointment like me." He meets Alex's gaze head on, as if daring him to decide whether or not he's joking.

Alex doesn't smile, even though it's his instinct to. He senses that would only annoy Danny and he doesn't want to do that. Alex is here to make friends, after all.

"Did you recognize Taylor?" Alex asks finally.

Danny glances away with a huff of laughter. "Is that a test?"

"No, I'm just asking." Alex lies.

"I know the girl who used to bully my sister in middle school," Danny says flatly.

"I didn't think you'd know that."

"So it was a test?" Danny asks and again, Alex gets the impression that Danny really doesn't like him.

Alex manages a smile, even though there is something distinctly embarrassing about being disliked by someone he barely knows. He feels like he's failed on some level. "No, just a question."

To Alex's surprise, Danny rests a hip against Taylor's Cherokee. To any onlooker, he might even look relaxed. "How long have you known them?"

"Six months."

Danny nods once. "I assumed longer. Then again, I think my Dad would have been just as eager had some stranger walked into the room, anything to distract him." This he says perfectly affably, but with a watchfulness that irritates Alex, as if he thinks he's being awfully clever. "They quite like distractions, my parents. Anything to keep them from paying too much attention to their… sensibilities? God forbid my Dad should realize that he's living his life on a set of rules barely strong enough to live a week by. You've heard it, right?"

Alex nods. "It's alright."

"We shouldn't be having this conversation then," Danny says with a thin smile.

"Not the part where homosexuality becomes bestiality," Alex says flatly and for some reason, adds: "The… other part."

Danny blinks at Alex. "Which one?"

"The part about setting boundaries," Alex says, even though he shouldn't. He never even talks about this with Benji; it always makes him go quiet.

"What about it?" Danny asks. He has smoked his cigarette to a stub and doesn't take his eyes off Alex as he flings it away.

"You set limits and other people start respecting those limits."

"Because clearly, I was respecting my Dad's limits when I left Prospect. I wasn't kicked out or anything." Danny says, his eyes boring into Alex's.

Alex forces himself not to look away. "Not like that. Like the way you're setting a limit for me with each word you say." The words come out all wrong, too sharp with intimacy and Alex looks away, embarrassed.

"What limit? Just to be sure you're getting the message I'm sending." His voice speaks such levels of condescension.

Alex just looks past Danny's shoulder, face hot. Either he got really bad at this or Danny Cooper is just better.

"What?" Danny says bitingly. "If you're so convinced about something, then help me understand. I'm all ears."

"I'm respecting the fact that you don't like me," Alex says and even though the back of his neck burns, he smiles a friendly smile. "If that's alright with you."

"I dislike that you're defending my Dad's bullshit. There's a difference." Danny says vehemently then frowns, as if he's forgotten what they're talking about. Again, his eyes sweep the parking lot and he shoves his hands in his pockets.

"I just wanted to tell you that if you need anything, you can call me," Alex says.

Danny's eyebrows rise. "Right, because you're the first person I'd call."

"It's just safer that way," Alex says levelly.

"Because everyone else is walking around with crowbars and pitchforks," Danny says.

Alex doesn't go so far as to say:  _You know what I mean_. He's at least above acknowledging the condescension being leveled at him. "There's a few more pharmacies around town or anything else, if you need. There's some places you shouldn't shop and-"

"I get it," Danny bites out. "It's not my first time." Then for some reason, he holds out his phone.

Alex hesitates for a moment before he takes it and dials his number. "There."

"Okay," Danny says. He doesn't look at Alex as he stuffs the phone in his pocket and goes to his car.

Alex leans against his jeep, heart beating hard in his chest as he looks at his boots, and stands there until the rumble of Danny's car fades away.


	6. Chapter 6

Three p.m. on a Wednesday afternoon, it's always quiet in the garage. Trevor goes to pick Taylor from school, Benji is busy with diagnostics and Alex is in the cramped little side office, keeping the paperwork in check and answering calls.

Reilly is gone, and for the first time in five days, the thought doesn't feel alien as he thinks it. He's given Danny Cooper his number, but he doesn't have Danny's and he's spent a good twelve hours thinking. It's not strictly  _stupid_  but the more he thinks about it, the more futile their conversation seems.

Yes, he's done something but what good is Danny having his number going to do Alex? What reason does Danny have to call Alex and make his job easier? None. Nothing.

It's precisely what Alex has achieved and the longer he sits there, filling out forms and tallying checks, the more irritated he becomes.

It takes him a second longer than it usually would to realize that his pen has run out. He sets it down and spends a moment staring at it, simply because the sunlight is bringing out the blonde in the hairs on his forearm, there's a gentle drone of an engine coming from the bay and Alex just wants to set his head down on the table and close his eyes.

With one flick of his index finger, Alex sends the pen skittering onto the floor. He doesn't pause to watch it as it hits the door with a plastic  _tic_  and rolls to a stop a few inches away.

He simply uncaps a new pen and is already hunched over another quotation when the door opens and sends the pen skittering under the filing cabinet.

Sluggishly, Alex looks up.

Benji lets the door bump gently against the wall and stands in the doorway for a good stretch. With raised eyebrows, Alex turns back to the papers in front of him.

"How's it going?" Benji asks as he drops into the chair across from Alex.

Alex furrows his eyebrows but doesn't look up. "Okay. You done with the Passat?"

"I'm never done with the Passats," Benji says and laughs. He scoots low in the chair and lets his head fall back.

Alex smiles at his pen.

"Guess what Mom said yesterday?" Benji nudges his feet under the table.

Alex looks up but Benji's tilted his head back and is staring at the ceiling. "What?"

"'Now Alex's a hardworking boy. You could afford to get the groceries every once in a while, Benji.'"

Alex laughs and sits back in his chair. "Where'd that go?"

Benji sits up with a frown. "She thinks my life's been too easy so far. I'm not mature enough for a roadtrip, apparently."

"Where'd she get _that_  idea?"

"You're an asshole. So not everybody can spend three hours a day on a hobby and I've got my own car-" Benji stops short at Alex's smile and sits back in his chair. "Why are you riling me up?"

Alex shrugs and nudges Benji's foot. His head hurts and it costs him; the smiling and the ease and the playfulness, but it's worth it when Benji snorts and looks away.

"How's things without Reilly?" Benji asks.

Alex shrugs. "Alright. She's the only one at home who actually talked to me."

Benji doesn't say anything, just smiles that small smile that speaks uncomfortably high volumes of affection.

"Jesus, relax," Alex mutters. "No need for  _that_  just yet."

He gets a semi-hard kick for that and as he sits cursing and rubbing at his shin, it's almost idyllic. Benji's lost the agitation of the week before and Alex can tell from how long the silence lasts that Benji doesn't have quite so much on his mind.

He's still thinking that when Benji says, "I was thinking I might tell Kieren about me."

Alex rubs at his shin for a good ten seconds after that, sure that he is crazy to assume. Then, just to be sure: "What about you?"

"You know what." Benji says.

Alex is overcome with the urge to just stare at Benji but he forces himself to look away and laugh. "You're going to tell your homophobic boss's nephew? Really?"

"He won't tell anyone. I trust him. He's my best friend."

"He could tell Trevor."

"He won't."

"He'd do anything for Trevor." Alex says flatly. "You know that."

"Trevor's not interested in what the fuck I get up to." Benji says.

Benji is awfully steely, calm even and Alex realizes stupidly that he's been thinking about this for a while. That this isn't a spur-of-the-moment thing.

"Why?" Alex asks.

"Who else would I tell? My  _dad_?"

"Why tell anyone?" Alex says slowly.

"Because it's driving me fucking crazy. I keep wanting to blurt it out to my mom, Alex. How insane is that?"

"Insane," Alex says softly. Things like this happen; people often get the spontaneous urge to come out. Alex just can't believe it's his fucking luck. His voice disappears into the silence and two minutes later, they're both just looking at each other and Alex isn't sure if he ever said anything.

"Listen to me, Alex." Benji says suddenly and pulls his chair forward, his jaw set. "I don't like this town and I'm  _doing_  something about that. I'm changing things, I'm making things the way I want them to be. I wanna do something about this too."

"You did do something about  _this_. We do something about it every week." Alex laughs, a strain of hopeless incredulity in his voice.

" _You_  did something about that. You came to me and it was fucking…" Benji sighs. "You don't know how that felt."

Alex doesn't say anything. He cannot imagine anything worse than encouraging Benji. Christ, is this his fault?

"Nobody ever took a risk like that for you. You don't know how it feels. You left a lot to chance, Alex. You took a huge risk because you felt something and you took a crazy, fucking chance for it. For  _me_. That's crazy."

Alex cannot bear this feeling of having lost his footing. He's ruined Benji. Beyond him somewhere, Benji is talking but the realization is so heavy that Alex cannot find the energy to move. "Why does that matter?"

"It matters because you did something about it, Alex. And I feel a certain way, like I want to fucking tell someone, and I want to do something about that too."

Alex shakes his head. "It's not just about you."

"I'm not telling him about us," Benji says, "I'm telling him about me." Alex doesn't miss the shortness of his voice.

After how hard he's worked to make sure that things go his way, they still won't work out. He can't ever catch a break. "Just because you want to do something doesn't mean it's a good idea."

"What about what you did?"

Alex doesn't know from where he summons the patience to levelly say, "That was a great idea, but I didn't know that."

"It's like the fucking car and the road trip, Alex. I can't help it."

"But it's not like the road trip. You're telling Trevor's nephew." Alex snaps. His fingers have gone white around the pen and foolishly, foolishly, he wants to yell. He can feel it gathering in his chest even as he sets the pen down and pushes his chair away from the desk.

Benji has never really felt like a mistake. A year ago, he'd had an air of self-possession to him, stillness, maturity. The car had already been a fixture back then but the roadtrip was only a vague, vague possibility.

If he's ruined Benji, he's fucked himself over too. He won't have a life if someone finds out. If the Coopers find out. "It's not just about you," Alex says again. It's about what'll happen to Janey if she finds out.

But Benji doesn't know that because Alex has never bothered to tell him.

The silence is surprisingly short-lived. Benji leans back in his chair and softly says, "Does your dad know?"

Alex laughs even though he doesn't feel like it. "He doesn't matter."

"What about Reilly?" Benji asks.

Alex has certainly fucked up if he's let Benji think that Jack and Reilly can be so offhandedly brought into this, that they have any right to this part of him. Alex is fairly certain that he is panicking but he forces himself to think of the right thing to say, something close to reasonable. "They don't matter, Benji. Things are finally going your way but this roadtrip isn't infinite. You're gonna have to come right back to this shithole. Don't tell Kieren."

Benji blinks hard and sits back in his chair. "I don't wanna come back."

"Jesus Christ," Alex groans and because he cannot think of anything else to do with himself, he just rests his forehead against the desk. It's not complicated. It's awfully simple and Alex has plenty of options. But they involve saying things along the lines of 'You're leaving but  _I'm not_ '; things which sound shitty even in his head. But more than that, things that are far more concrete than anything he's ever said to Benji.

"Alex…" Benji says and trails off. His indecision lasts for barely a moment before he says, "How long do you think you're going to keep it a secret?"

Alex sighs, long and deep. He cannot bear his own disinterest. How can he explain to Benji that he will happily keep it a secret for the rest of his life if he has to? That surviving the consequences of Jack's actions is draining him and that his job and his center of balance matter more than  _anything_. "Benji, you're the one going on a roadtrip. I'm staying right here, where I work and live. I need my job. I'm never going back to asking Jack for money."

The silence that follows his words is suffocating, perilous, and Alex forces himself to sit up and look at Benji, because that's what needs to be done.

The look on Benji's face surprises him. There is no disappointment or even anger, simply resignation. It's so reminiscent of Jack, Alex can barely hold Benji's gaze.

No, Alex never seems to feel much of anything but he feels humiliated now; humiliated that this is what he is, the unrelenting complacency to Benji's restlessness. How can he begin to explain that it's not inertia? That it's simply a matter of being somewhere he belongs, no matter how hard it is to belong when the one thing that's always supposed to be there hasn't been there for six months, and Alex cannot sometimes stomach the thought of getting up and going to work every day when Jack and Reilly have safely tucked everything away into memory. As if they don't feel her absence.

Alex only says, "Okay?"

"Yeah, okay," Benji says.

It's not complicated, really. It's awfully simple.

* * *

Alex doesn't want to but he goes anyway. Donut is positively bustling by evening standards, with a grand total of fifteen people actually inside the store. Someone's propped open the door for some inexplicable reason and the inside of Donut is muggy enough to drive Alex to stand under the AC for a few minutes.

He cannot really explain what he's doing here. It's as grievously simple as wanting to be near someone who, at least peripherally, knows what the fuck is going on. Someone to whom Alex doesn't have to explain things, no matter how much he despises it.

It's doesn't even matter, especially today, but Alex still has a certain affection for the fact that he looks more like his mother than Jack. He'd positively hated it, once. In high school, his soft features hadn't worked in his favour. That might also have had to with a sister who went around kicking eight graders in the shins, but for the most part, it had to do with the softness of Alex's mouth.

Nothing had been quite rough enough then. He's taller now, walks around most days with stubble unshaven, grows his hair past the stupid buzzcut he'd sported in high school and lets it do what it wants.

Jack, on the other hand, is all neat, close-cropped hair. Jesus, to think that Alex had wanted to be  _that_  in high school.

That which is incidentally sitting right across Donut, book in one hand and coffee mug in the other. It's his 'spot'. The place whereupon he descends every Wednesday as Alex goes about his work and they all pretend that Jack's presence isn't pointed enough that every one of coworkers notices.

It's a big show, all of it; Jack walking all the way to Donut, ordering an Americano and sitting there reading his ex-wife's paperbacks.

Most days, if Alex thinks hard enough, he can feel the humiliation of the farce.

As if Jack even cares. Alex feels the exhaustion in his bones from sitting in a hot office all day, the twinge in his hand from pressing the pen so hard into the paper. He goes and sits down from across his father because somewhere far past the exhaustion, he is scared of what Benji might do.

Jack glances up as he turns a page. "Done for the day?"

"Yeah," Alex says. He wants to rest his head on the table just like before. Instead, he leans his back against the wall and sits facing sideways away from Jack. The last time Alex actually sat down here, it was almost three months ago. He'd wanted to see if Jack would say anything. He hadn't.

"Reilly called this morning, but you'd already left for work," Jack says as he picks up his coffee mug.

Alex can feel his gaze on him. Sometimes, passingly, he thinks that it must hurt him too. Maybe the familiarity comforts Jack, just like it does Alex. But he can never manage to hold onto that thought for too long.

"She said she'd call yesterday, guess she forgot," Alex says. He knows he's not important enough for Reilly to actually plan an elaborate mindfuck for but she at least tries to stay consistent with her estimates. His mouth has already moved on to the next topic. He feels disconnected from himself, heart beating fast as he says, "She says I'm predictable. You think that's true?"

Jack's mug knocks twice against the tabletop as he sets it down.

Alex does not care for that little display of discomfit so he looks towards the counter. Danny's on the espresso machine, his back turned to the shop and Taylor is handing someone their receipt. Alex is not the sort of person who indulges in his  _thoughts_  too often, especially the meandering sort that always come back to something that hurts, but he does it now. Maybe it's because of the sudden threat; he sees suddenly how fragile all these little pieces are. All the discrete little things that make up his life. From Tommy Cooper to Taylor Whitfield, the cramped and stuffy side office and the backroom of Donut. Lackluster, but it is still his. Alex doesn't want to lose any of it.

"Yes, you are," Jack says from somewhere far away.

Taylor is working on auto-pilot, counting change and handing receipts, and he wonders if she can see what Alex is as clearly as Reilly claims to. Taylor wouldn't think much of him if she knew the things he thought. The plans he makes in his head. Little, shrewd steps for survival that seem lewd if he thinks too much about them.

Taking a cake to the Coopers. Smiling with Taylor. Giving Danny Cooper his number.

 _Predictable_. It's like dying of rabies, not because dying of rabies is predictable but because what a pointless way to die. Predictable, predictable. What a boring, insipid, inert thing to be.

Alex turns to Jack and is met with a long look –the sort given to something that befuddles but to understand which there is no actual desire. "Enjoy yourself every once in a while, Alex," Jack says.

Alex doesn't focus too much on the technicalities of a divorced, forty year-old adulterer telling him to enjoy life. "I enjoy myself every day," Alex quips with a pleasant smile. Somewhere in a part of his mind that is still tuned into the family frequency, he registers that Jack doesn't appreciate his tone.

Jack holds up the book he's reading, a ratty James Patterson. "I got your mother this book for our fifteenth anniversary, when you were still a freshman." He flips to the first page and shows Alex the date. "That was the year we got the charcoal canister in that piece of shit Toyota fixed. Four hundred dollars out of your college fund." Jack says levelly. There is no meanness there. Jack is considerably more sophisticated than Reilly.

Alex can only stare. It's more than they've said to each other in weeks and even though the urge to not look at Jack for too long is always there, he still nods. "And?"

"The reason you didn't go to college and you work two jobs is my fault and it's your mother's fault." Jack says lightly. "And we were fine with that decision, not that there was a point at which we made a decision to never send our first kid to college. You got more tact than your sister, that's for sure. You did alright." Jack frowns as if he's forgotten what he was going to say. "You're not predictable. Or I don't know, maybe you are. Why would you ask me that question?"

"I don't know. Maybe because you should know." Alex says, exasperated that they are even having this conversation. "It was a stupid question."

"Damn stupid question." Jack shuts the book and sets it down. The fucking pretension of that gesture grates on Alex's nerves. "There's a difference between being reliable and being predictable."

"You saying I'm reliable?" Alex asks, a sharp challenge in his voice. He feels offended, prickly.

"A donkey's reliable, Alex," Jack says.

Alex feels maybe insulted or appreciated - but he cannot distinguish one from the other.

"Reliability is good." Alex says sharply.

"So is predictability. But no one ever waxes poetic about reliability. Or predictability." Jack says.

For a moment, Alex is completely lost because he isn't sure what they're talking about anymore. It's not like he wants someone to wax poetic about him. Then he sees that Jack is still holding open the page with the date of the fifteeth marriage anniversary and dumbstruck, he realizes that they are talking about marriage.

Alex tries to speak past the stone that has firmly lodged itself in his throat. "But you weren't reliable, Dad."

Jack gives him a wan smile and Alex sees that while the words don't hurt him, they do unsettle him. "Your mother was. She was very reliable, Alex. All the way to the end. I could rely on her to be what she always was." he gives Alex a long look and there is a sudden affectionate humor in his eyes but Alex knows that he's only being laughed at. For missing her. For needing a family. "Want some fatherly advice?"

Alex swallows and says, "No."

"Your dick isn't anything to be proud of, Alex. There's always the ones who know how to use it to make you feel less of a man."

"Hilarious," Alex bites out. They haven't talked in so long, he'd almost forgotten this particular brand of condescension. The way it makes his throat seize up.

Jack smiles a little and Alex tries not to think too much about the cool clarity between them, like sunshine after the rain.

Jack turns back to his book and the hour hand on the clock moves sluggishly towards ten.


	7. Chapter 7

Benji doesn't tell him about the party for Kieren until Thursday night, long after Alex has already found out, courtesy of Taylor. As much as he hates the thought of being in Benji's home with a bunch of bored townies and asshole Whitfields, he still goes home from work on Friday and puts on his good jeans, dispenses with the plaid for the day and picks out a t-shirt with unfortunate red, white and blue stripes.

He even puts on his Nike kicks.

The house to himself, he's not sure what's wrong with him, but he spends a good two minutes staring at Reilly's blow-dryer. The bottle of hair gel he never uses is languishing in the bathroom cabinet and he even goes and gets it.

Then he realizes he's standing in the bathroom, putting gel in his hair for going to a party for townies and Whitfields.

A wrench has been thrown into the works and for the past two days, Alex has ground to a halt, found himself staring into space, thinking about nothing and everything all at the same time.

It happens then and he stares right at himself and doesn't so much realize as he identifies that he wants to look good for Benji; a force of habit.

With as much certainty as he knows that the face in the mirror is his own, he knows that somewhere, somehow, he is in the wrong for countering Benji's words with thoughts of his own survival. But just as he knows that Benji is the best thing that has ever happened to him, he knows that he has never felt more exposed.

Alex wets his hands, scrubs the gel out of his hair and then pats it all back down. Frowning, he towels his hair dry, slams his hand on the switchboard and yanks the bathroom door shut behind him.

A party is just spending hours at Benji's place, pretending to be nice and ordinary and straight with no chance of talking to Benji alone.

* * *

He's late and by the time he arrives, the music is loud enough to reach the driveway.

Clearly, Taylor has taken liberties with the guest list and bemused, Alex looks around at all the high schoolers as he goes through to the foyer. He sees Benji almost immediately, standing next to a tall, bespectacled guy. Without a break in his step, Alex goes down the hallway to the back of the house and through to the backyard.

Music bursts sporadically from three different stereos and for just a moment, as Alex squeezes past two teenage girls huddled together on the back steps, he can pick out Kesha, dubstep and post-hardcore music from all corners of the property.

He doesn't realize he's smiling until he catches a girl's eyes and she smiles back. She's blonde with a full face and a beautiful smile, and Alex politely looks past her and crosses the backyard to where the teenagers have commandeered the pool.

He's grown past the rushes of panic in his chest. It is an existential hazard, this; an unfortunate side effect of who he likes to fuck. Where the first month of working at Donut had frayed his nerves to the point where he could barely bring himself to meet a girl's eyes, he's gotten better.

He feels positively invigorated. If only Benji could have seen it. But Benji doesn't, he never seems to be there whenever Alex catches a girl's eye or her attention. If only Alex could explain how  _manageable_  it is.

But it is Alex's own fault. He is stupid not to have put a name to the yearning he sees in Benji, as if he thinks that he's being robbed of something. As if he thinks that calling himself gay and telling everyone else that he is gay will grant him passage to some gilt paradise where no one will begrudge him who he is.

And Alex knows it isn't fair. He wants things too; he wants familiarity, the past. He wants control, just enough to keep things the way they are. But Alex has been in the Cooper's house and he knows that Danny isn't human to them. He's become nothing more than a legend, another page to be filed away in the family drama and forgotten. Danny is something to overcome, a notion to defeat.

And it is what is in store for Benji too if his father finds out. He will become a phantom stored away beside all the crockery the Pearce household never touches because it's lost its newness. He will be reduced to the label he puts on himself. No one wants to look past the surface of a black boy in a hick town.

Alex spots a six pack lying at the foot of a pool chair and without question, he takes one and he opens it and he drinks until his mouth isn't so dry anymore.

This is the wrong place to be thinking these things. The wrong time too, because these thoughts have never been clearer in his head, never been more ready to be articulated.

Alex swallows the warm beer without pause, staring up at the night sky dreary and lifeless without stars.

"Woah, slow down there, buddy," says a teenage boy, blinking up at Alex. He's got a pouty mouth, quiffed and gelled hair and Alex is infinitely glad that there's plenty more like him milling about the pool. He likes the safety that comes with being in a horde of young pretty boys where he is nearly invisible.

Smiling, Alex places the empty beer can on the table beside him. "Thanks for the beer."

He just raises an eyebrow and watches Alex out of the corner of his eye until Alex shoves his hands into his pockets and goes back to the house.

* * *

Alex grabs Kieren in a hug before Kieren can grab him, thumps him hard on the back and spouts gibberish like "Kieren, you piece of shit!", until he feels riled up. Behind Kieren, Benji is gnawing on his lip, trying not to laugh as he rolls his eyes at Alex.

It's about as rare as a good party in Prospect and with a wink at Benji, Alex claps Kieren on the back and stands back to look at him. "A proper mechanic," Alex nearly yells. It isn't hard to bring himself to do this. He likes Kieren,  _everyone_  likes Kieren.

"Jesus Christ, nothing ever changes around here," Kieren says. He's laughing, grinning, mostly drunk and talking a lot louder than he probably realizes. "Jesus, look at that beard." He slaps a hand on Alex's cheek in wonderment.

Someone jabs Alex sharply in the ribs and he has barely turned around before Taylor shoves a drink in his hand. "Hey, hey," She says, as she brushes past him to ruffle Kieren's hair. "Look at this." she says gleefully as she plucks at Kieren's clothes, his mechanic's overalls from Trevor's garage. "Ren here thought it was so clever," she says with the sort of affection that only Kieren ever seems to inspire in people.

In Prospect, everyone knows the Whitfields and of these Whitfields, everyone knows Kieren best. Maybe it's the spectacles or maybe it's the bad posture but Kieren inspires confidence in people, positions himself unquestioningly and self-effacingly as everyone's big brother.

Kieren suddenly blinks as if he's remembered something and clasps Alex's shoulder, steering him closer to the living room doorway where the music is streaming from. "Alex, Alex…" he says quietly, breathing beer into his face.

"Yeah, man. What's up?"

"I heard about your parents. That is some - some shit," he says earnestly.

The music is loud enough that there's no chance of Taylor and Benji hearing and Alex looks back over his shoulder until he's sure they're talking.

"I'm real sorry about it. It's bullshit, man. Fucking divorce," Kieren continues. His words sound like one long, long sigh and Alex doesn't for a second doubt his sincerity. He just doesn't know what to do with it.

"Yeah, it's shit, Kieren." Alex says. But he isn't sure that Kieren is sober enough to keep his volume in check so he pats his shoulder and says, "Here, man. Have a drink. It's your night."

He nods, comically seriously and says, "Yeah, you're right." Then he smiles, a brilliant, gleeful smile.

"What is it?" Alex asks.

"Just… the potential of it all. It's good to be home, you remember that." Kieren says with a long sigh, as if he's just felt a bracing gust of cold, morning air. "You remember that, Alex."

Alex smiles and nods. He doesn't have the heart to say something so he leans against the doorway until some acquaintance of Kieren finally notices him and grabs him in a hug as wildly enthusiastic as Alex's.

Usually, Kieren has more tact than this. He is like Alex without all the deliberation; everything comes naturally to him. Alex forgives him his inebriation, the abruptness with which he brought it up but it's better that it's been gotten over with while Kieren is drunk.

"Don't look so thoughtful just yet," Benji says loudly. "You've got a good... three hours before you're going anywhere."

Vaguely, Alex feels betrayed – as if it isn't all Benji's fault, he deigns to mock him for it. Then he remembers, remembers to look at Benji. From his spot by the doorway, he watches Benji in short, innocent intervals until he remembers that Benji only smiles because he knows – knows what's coming. For Benji, the best things aren't twenty years in the future. They are soon because he'd made things that way.

And Alex wants that, just not Benji's version of it.

He twists the cap off the beer bottle in his hand and drinking in small, half-hearted sips, he again goes past the two girls on the back steps. This time, he gets an aborted, contemptuous look and a subtle realignment until their backs are fully turned to him.

Bemused, Alex goes over the grass, skirts the pool and over to the garage at the back of the house. As he suspects, the lone figure reclining in a pool chair by the garage, shrouded in a haze of smoke is Tommy.

Alex plops down on the edge of the chair, closer than he needs to be. The awkward intimacy of their arrangement is not lost on Tommy who snorts to himself and sits up, his knee knocking into Alex's tailbone. Childishly, Alex enjoys those three seconds before Tommy sits up, mostly because they both know Alex is doing it on purpose, but also because Tommy is not invested enough to ever challenge him.

If anything, Tommy seems to enjoy the whole thing – always smiles ponderously as if they are paying homage to all the people who have called Tommy a fag.

"You're dressed for the occasion," Tommy says as he hands Alex a lighter and a cigarette.

Alex shakes his head at the lighter and pockets the cigarette. "That almost sounds like a compliment."

"It is. Anything but the plaid, that's what I always say." There is no camaraderie in his voice. It's just a remark, but there's always that dangerous hint of rapport. "I've spent plenty of days contemplating your wardrobe, Alex, and I regret to inform you that you're a failure of a fag. Either you buy a tiara or you grow a mustache. You're not trying hard enough to satisfy my heteronormative, stereotypical views of what a fag should look like. Christ, I thought we'd covered that by now." All this he says in a dry monotone, eyes closed. He takes a deep, deep drag of his cigarette and his eyes, when he opens them, shine with tears. "I'm a little drunk."

"It's okay," Alex says quietly. Mostly because Alex is about ninety percent sure that Tommy doesn't really believe that Alex is gay. "Are you alright?" He angles himself so that he's half facing Tommy.

"I'm  _so_  good. You?"

"I'm okay, Tommy," Alex says.

"Yeah, you'd be okay. Keeping busy?" Tommy draws his knees up to his chest and perches his chin on them. They both know what he means but he must be feeling expansive today, because he adds: "How'd you like my big brother?"

"He's almost as clever as you are."

He gets a smile for that, a pensive twist of the mouth. "That's probably the nicest thing anyone's ever said about that dickhead."

Tommy's not like Janey; it's not just that he loathes Alex and thinks he's the stupidest person in Prospect. Tommy considers it his due to protect Alex from his own stupidity and maintain, without a doubt, that Tommy knows that divorce is the only reason Alex found his way to the Coopers and that if there is one person whose respect Alex will never have, it is Tommy.

It isn't apparent then, even though Alex is good about reminding himself.

"He thinks he's doing us a favour by coming back," Tommy says with a sharp look at Alex. He plucks the forgotten cigarette from Alex's hand and for a long, long moment, just considers it. "Did you talk to him?"

"I work with him," Alex says drily.

"Did you  _talk_  to him, about us?" Tommy says, just as drily.

"Yeah, I did. We talked about your dad-" Alex says.

"Did you have a good laugh about stupid Mr. Cooper's stupid ideas?" Tommy says with a brittle laugh.

Alex furrows his brow and doesn't say anything to that.

"Everybody's the hero of their own shit story," Tommy snorts and eases back into the pool chair. "My heroic brother battling oppression to go off on a quest of self-discovery. I wonder why he's back. Don't you, Alex?"

"Yeah, I do," Alex says plainly, because that is what Tommy wants him to say.

"I don't. The more pertinent question is: why did he leave?"

Alex isn't really looking at Tommy anymore, just down at his Nike kicks, garish and expensive. "I know why he left."

"No, I'm talking about that exact moment when an 18 year old decides that his dick is more important than his family."

"It's more than that," Alex says.

Tommy hoots with laughter, so suddenly and so loudly that Alex starts. "Wait till my dad hears that one. Jesus Christ."

Alex brings himself to laugh. Then drains his beer so that Tommy doesn't see his smile die a pathetic, wavering end – does it even though he knows that Tommy will notice.


	8. Chapter 8

Alex notices Danny before Tommy does. He's leaning against the side of the house, looking at the swimming teenagers like they're the most pitiful creatures he's ever seen. In the one week Alex has worked with him, he hasn't yet seen a look of such judgment on his face.

Danny's gaze does not meander about the yard, flicks straight from the teenagers to Alex and then immediately back to the teenagers. It is a knee-jerk reaction and with some amusement, Alex sees that he's caught Danny staring.

Alex raises his beer a bit and smiles at him; he doesn't look away until he's sure that Danny gets that he's not being condescended. With Tommy at his back, Alex knows that he doesn't exactly look friendly. But Danny seems to get the message and crosses the backyard with his hands shoved in his pockets.

"Hey. Hope this isn't too much of a shitfest," Alex says.

"No, it's perfect. I know everyone, everyone knows me," Danny says with a slow smile past Alex's shoulder.

"Hello, big brother of mine," Tommy says, his voice hoarse from the cigarette smoke.

Danny smiles as if to say:  _no, no, you're doing too much, there's no need for that_. "Whose party is this anyway?"

"Kieren, he works down at the Whitfield garage; he just got a certification," Alex says.

"What, not enough bi-curious frat boys?" Tommy pipes up lightly.

"Sadly, no. Now, I'm gonna have to go spit in somebody's face and give them AIDS. Then it'll be a real party, huh, Tommy?" Danny says with a pleasant grin.

"Here, have Alex. He's a real friend of the family, did you hear?" Tommy snorts, then coughs on an exhale of smoke.

If it were anyone else, Alex would be embarrassed to be brought into a conversation like this. But by virtue of all the tacit agreements of the past six months, there is no dread.

Danny smiles, distracted. He's standing with his hands in his pockets, far enough that he doesn't tower over him. Danny is nearly a head shorter than Alex, shorter too than Tommy and if it weren't for that smile on his face, he would look outmatched.

As it is, he stands as if this is the sort of situation he often finds himself in; nothing in his demeanor suggests that he's spent five years away from Tommy.

As prickly as Tommy gets, Alex is expecting much worse than for Tommy to say, "Alex and I were just discussing plaid. I hold that Alex looks much better without it."

It's far, far better than Tommy saying  _we were just discussing Dad_. If Danny dislikes him because of the precious little he'd said behind Donut, Alex dreads to think how his opinion would evolve if he found out that Alex has been talking to Tommy about it.

Danny laughs and  _hmm_ s deep in his throat. For a moment, he looks like he might actually say something but he glances at Alex, seems to think better of it and looks away as if they're nothing more than two potted plants.

Alex takes the moment to glance back at Tommy and receives an eye roll for his efforts. Tommy sighs as if Danny is the most tedious person he's ever had to contend with.

When Alex turns back, Danny is still standing there, looking out past the backyard, jaw working.

"You can say whatever you like. Like I said, Alex's a real friend of the family. And he doesn't take hints too well," Tommy says.

Danny nods, with the air of someone who's only half-listening. Alex senses Tommy bristle and just like that, he's got that brittle shakiness to him again.

"Guess what I dug up in celebration of your blessed return?" Tommy asks.

"What?" Danny says. He's not really even facing them anymore, just looking around as if everything is more interesting than the two of them.

"That poster of Michelangelo's Last Judgment you used to like so much," Tommy says

Alex watches as Danny seems to blink hazily awake and laugh, a helpless guffaw that stops nearly as soon as it starts. "Jesus…" he says and finally, he looks at Tommy.

"You remember that one, don't you?" Tommy says. Alex can hear the smirk in his voice and suddenly, he is very glad he isn't looking at Tommy. He doesn't want the sidelong glance that will put them in cahoots and make Danny the enemy.

Danny is still smiling, but Alex recognizes the look on his face, the same he'd given Alex behind Donut when he'd dared him to decide whether or not he was joking. "Yeah, I do."

"I like that one. I keep it on the wall, just so Dad can see it every now and then," Tommy says.

Alex, biting the inside of his cheek, plucks Tommy's cigarette pack without looking at him. Danny's silence stretches long after he lights the cigarette and takes a few drags. A prickling sensation sweeps across his cheek and he pretends like he can't see Danny looking at him.

"Alex doesn't know the story," Tommy says primly. "You want to tell him?"

"He let you put that up on the wall?" This, Danny says with some reluctance and with an indiscrete side-long look at Alex.

"You'll see that he lets us do lots of things," Tommy says with a pleased smile. "See, I'm  _trying_  to tell you that Alex is a real friend of the family and Dad won't be too happy if you treat him like a stranger so you can tell him about the time Dad caught you masturbating to a pixely print of a fresco. See, it's all good. Alex knows everything there is to know."

No, Alex doesn't really know everything else there is to know and Alex doesn't especially enjoy his presence being used to humiliate someone. And he is about to say it too, about to say  _Shut the fuck up, Tommy_ , without any idea of what to do after that but Danny is already laughing, a deep, pleasant lilt that makes Alex look up at him.

"I guess I'd almost be embarrassed if everyone and their grandmother didn't already know that I like being fucked in the ass. There's a key distinction for you to consider for next time, Tommy."

Alex tries hard to fight the heat wrapping its fingers around his neck, but he mostly just fails and sits there, ears red, trying to fight back a smile.

"Duly noted," Tommy says drily.

"The lack of name-calling was refreshing. Well done, Tommy, you've gotten much better at this." Danny's got a smile on his face, an understated affair that rescues his features from severity.

Tommy looks away and Alex likes that he isn't pleased. And foolishly, he enjoys the way Danny catches his eye and looks at him without trying to conceal the tiredness in his eyes.

Behind him, Tommy has stretched his legs out and angled himself away from the both of them. "By the way, don't freak out if you see Janey. I brought her."

He doesn't say anything else after that.

* * *

Alex's gesture is muted enough that Danny could easily ignore it if he wanted to, but he doesn't. Face expressionless, he follows.

The teenage girls at the backdoor go still as Alex and Danny edge past them, watching Danny with kohl-rimmed eyes. At the end of the hall, when Alex glances back, they're still looking at him.

Someone's turned up the music and turned down the lights and there are teenagers everywhere, chattering, their voices ebbing and flowing like a wave. The blessed cotton candy frappucino crowd.

Alex lightly touches Danny's elbow and jerks his chin towards the kitchen, tiled and marbled, with a kitchen island. It's one of the more intimidating rooms Alex has been in his life, simply by virtue of how bright everything is. A 24-pack of beer sits forgotten on the counter and Alex opens one.

Danny watches him drink out of the corner of his eye before he says, "That's the family legend. I like to imagine that they tell it at dinner parties."

Alex knows he's not nearly as prepared as he'd been behind Donut that day. This whole venture seems doubly stupid now that Benji's said what he has to say and carefully, carefully, Alex admits that he doesn't know why he ever expected that hanging around Danny Cooper in a town as small as Prospect wouldn't be as obvious as it clearly is. It had been easy to overlook it when all he could think about was protecting the one nexus of sense in his life from Danny's influence. He wonders if Danny even knows how much power he has over him. "I never heard it," he says.

"Do you get invited to many dinners at my parents' house?" Danny says mercilessly, but with an amused smile that surprises Alex. "I'm kidding. Do you stand up to my brother much?" The music drowns out a few syllables but Alex doesn't dare lean closer.

Instead, he smiles, in that innocuous way that always makes people think he's stupid. "Do you think he bullies me?"

"I think he's an asshole who gets bored with his small, small life," Danny says loudly.

"Is your life much bigger than his?" Alex says.

Danny's mouth goes tight, as if he thinks that Tommy is being defended. Alex doesn't care to correct that notion, Danny doesn't need to know that they're on the same side. Instead, he just bears Danny's look with that same pleasant expression on his face.

Danny eventually just gives up and leans his head back against the kitchen cabinets. He's got two buttons opened and his skin dips into shadow beneath his collarbone.

"I hope for your sake you know what you're doing with my family," Danny says quietly.

"I do," Alex says.

"It'll take a toll eventually, spending so much time with people who will do anything to ignore the way things really are," Danny says. "It always does." He sounds tired, tired and Alex isn't too sure if he's being fucked with or not.

"It hasn't yet," Alex says.

"It doesn't, if you share the tendency," Danny says with a grin.

With a laugh, Alex rubs a hand across his face. Reilly would revel if she could hear this; these words belong more to her than they do to Danny.

"What's funny?" Danny asks with a glance towards the doorway. A few twenty-somethings, outnumbered by the teenagers, funnel into the kitchen and gather, chattering, by the French doors.

"You sound like my sister," Alex forces himself to say. Mentioning Reilly is something he actively avoids doing but for now, at least, it's something they have in common.

"You have a sister?"

Alex nods, offhand and casual in the face of Danny's interest. "Yeah, she's on a trip to San Francisco."

"Why San Francisco?"

Just visiting my divorced mother. "It's where my parents are from."

"You didn't grow up here?"

"Of course, I grew up here," Alex says and doesn't realize he's folded his arms until after he's said, "My parents didn't."

And maybe it's his imagination, but Danny seems to pick up on his defensiveness, smiles and looks away. He's not as still as he'd been that night behind Donut, not nearly as watchful. It only now occurs to Alex that maybe Danny really had been expecting to get hurt and the thought, sluggish in surfacing, offends him, sharply and momentarily.

Danny's angled himself away from him, with the air of someone who often manages situations with a forbidding set of his shoulders and nothing more. He looks as if he's been marooned.

Unsure, Alex glances about him. With a clatter and a rise in chatter, the group of twenty-somethings go out into the yard, leaving the French doors open. The scent of night-blooming jasmine settles heavy in the kitchen.

And just like that, Alex feels unnerved in a way he hadn't felt that night behind Donut. If only Benji could know how much his words are making Alex doubt everything. It feels dangerous to be alone in this kitchen with Danny right now, feels like putting everything at risk.

And it's not that Alex hadn't considered this before. He'd just never thought of that risk as entirely possible.

"Tommy doesn't… I mean, he means it. But he cares that you're back." Alex doesn't hesitate to add, "He cared what cake I brought that day. Your parents told me not to bring tiramisu."

"Jesus Christ, Alex," Danny says with a muted, bitter look. "Why do I feel like that's a habit of yours?"

"What is?" Alex asks.

"That… doling out the good bits. Just enough so that I'll know to keep talking to you."

The unfairness of that stings. In all honesty, Alex hasn't even gotten to that part yet. "Is there anything other than your family you wanted to talk about?"

"Maybe there is," Danny says, voice raspy and distracted.

"I'm listening," Alex says quietly, but he cannot shake the feeling that he just sounds snarky. So he adds, with probably a disproportionate amount of sincerity, "I am."

Danny stares at him as if he's a water bottle claiming sentience. "What the fuck are you doing?" He asks.

For a long, long moment, they just stare at each other.

It takes Alex a few seconds to consider that maybe Danny thinks he's being fucked with.

"I'm just talking to you, man," Alex says.

"How'd you meet my dad?" Danny's practically vibrating with silent energy.

Vaguely, Alex feels a bit offended. "At the garage. Tommy's car overheated. No coolant, as usual."

"Tommy doesn't have a car," Danny says flatly.

"He's had it for a year now," Alex says. "I just topped it up with coolant? It's all I'm really qualified to do," he adds, simply because Danny looks pretty much lost.

"You got something stronger to drink than fucking Coors?" Danny grinds out.

"It's… uh, yeah." It takes him a second to remember, but when he goes to open the cabinet under the sink, it's locked. "Guess not."

"Fuck, this music is atrocious," he mutters as he fishes a lighter and a pack of cigarettes out of his pocket. He takes a few drags before he says, abruptly, "Is it just the limits you like or is there some other reason you hang around them?"

"So we are talking about your family?" Alex says.

All he gets is a look, heavy with derision.

"I like them. I enjoy their company," Alex says finally.

"You enjoy my mother's company? Really?"

"Not really. She doesn't really talk to me…ever. I don't think she likes me very much."

Danny laughs, as if amazed. "I can't imagine why."

Alex furrows his brow and shoves his hand into his pockets. "She mostly just looks past me a lot."

Danny raises an eyebrow and for a tiny moment, they teeter on the brink before he says, "Because you look like me."

"I don't look like you," Alex says immediately.

Danny's right eyebrow is still raised. "To her, I mean. She's got bad eyesight."

"That bad, really?" Alex says. He doesn't know why it takes him another two seconds to realize that it's a joke. He clears his throat and reaches for another beer. "Um, no. She doesn't like my… there's a word for it."

"What?" Danny's eyebrow looks like it's been stapled in place.

Christ, the judgment sure is refreshing. "She doesn't like how reserved I am," Alex says.

"You don't strike me as particularly reticent. If anything, you're beginning to seem a bit reckless in your insistence on talking to me."

"I mean, I'm not insisting on talking to you. We work together."

"No, I get it. You feel like you're obligated to… considering your unique position." Any sign of levity is summarily gone now.

"My unique position?" Alex says, with a self-effacing smile; maybe he can inspire Danny to go easier on him.

"I mean, there's a word for it. I don't want to be too brazen." Danny says with a polite smile.

For a second, Alex is certain that he means gay but the thought passes too quickly to actually frighten him. "Oh, you mean a replacement," he says lightly.

The eyebrow comes down and Danny looks away, as if to compose himself. "You're pretty recent too. I was expecting them to have gotten a house pet by now."

Carefully, Alex says, "I like to think I  _am_ that house pet."

Danny huffs a breath of laughter, as if in surprise. "Really?"

Alex shrugs. Reilly's the one who thinks he's the house pet, and she doesn't bother to hide it. But he's the one who knows what he's doing. It's just surviving, finding something that makes his days better and Alex is fine with that. He's comfortable with this reality; it's the only reason he says, "I don't try to make sense of what your father says. It just makes me feel better."

"What part?" Danny says.

Alex laughs. "The part about setting limits." They're just recycling words now and just like last time, there's no reason for saying this. But he says it anyway, simply because this makes sense to him and he wants someone else to see it too - maybe Danny will understand or he won't. It doesn't matter.

"I don't get that," Danny says.

Alex shrugs. "Everyone around you is coloring outside the lines, doing whatever the fuck they want. They don't give a shit how it affects you. What do you do?"

"I don't know. What?" Danny asks with an amused look. He's folded his arms and is leaning back against the counter.

"You don't say yes to their bullshit, and you go make your own system. You keep your head down and you keep them the fuck away and you live your life," Alex says. Anger thrums deep in his chest; some days, just thinking it in words instead of abstracts exhausts him. Everything, the unfairness, Jack's entitlement, it makes his head spins some days.

"Who are we talking about?" Danny asks. He's lost the smile and he's giving Alex a level look.

"You, I don't know. Anyone." Alex shrugs again.

"You?"

"Yeah, that works," Alex says.

Danny nods and for a long moment, he just looks down at the beer in his hand as if communing with it. Then, with a small clear of his throat, he pushes off the counter. "Listen, Alex. I am really tired, okay? Having a dad like mine does that to you, I'm sure you understand, considering how much  _insight_  you have. And I'm not here for a project."

"Fuckin' A," Alex says with a pleasant smile. "I don't want to be your project."

"Great," Danny says with a hard blink.

Alex holds his gaze until it wavers and Danny looks away. Talking about the divorce may make his body burn with anger but he feels vindicated, he's still in control. He can see right through Danny's condescension to a scared young man putting up clumsy defenses. And even though Danny suddenly becomes hard-pressed to even look Alex in the eye, it is precisely how Alex knows that he's, more or less, got him.

And finally, it feels like he's getting things done.


	9. Chapter 9

Danny drifts away and Alex stands there, feeling strangely serene even though his phone is ringing and he knows exactly who it is. He finishes off his warm beer, the grain dryness lingering on his tongue, and lets the phone ring for a few more seconds before he picks up. "Hi," he says. "Sorry, I was busy assimilating into the Cooper clan."

"Oh my God, you're so funny," Reilly says.

"You're calling three days late," Alex says, pleased. If Reilly's arbitrating the rules, he at least deserves to mock her for it.

"I was busy," she says with a bored huff.

"Assimilating into the Cooper clan?"

"You're not funny and that doesn't make any sense," Reilly says drily.

"What? You're the one who said it."

"And clearly, it struck a nerve." She quips. "What's that music?"

"Party at Benji's. The teenagers hijacked everything," he says.

She  _hmm_ s, then: "You sound tired."

Alex smiles and his brow furrows on impulse. Some days, everything she says seems to come out of left field. "I've been up since six. Some of us have jobs, you know," he says, just for the fuck of it.

"Jesus, three jokes in less than a minute. Why are you in such a good mood?" Reilly says.

Alex just glances up at the ceiling, resisting the urge to roll his eyes. "No particular reason. Just drunk."

"So how's Danny Cooper?" Reilly says smoothly.

Alex is unimpressed. "Are you fucking serious?"

"What? It's a good a thing as any to talk about. Him being a Cooper and all, it might actually hold your interest," she says, smoothly, almost jokingly.

The laughter in her voice surprises Alex. With some effort, he resists the urge to ask her why she's calling. "Okay? How about you tell me about San Francisco?"

She laughs gleefully and says, "Mom showed me the school where she and dad met. That's what she said. But of course, we will forever fondly remember it as the place of your conception."

Alex laughs. He likes that even the moment of his conception has such a strong sense of irony to it. It surprises most people to know that his parents are still in their thirties, and it would even be funny if it weren't just profoundly depressing. 21 years with one man, and Annabelle McKinley's still only 38. She could live another lifetime, do anything she wants in the city where she grew up.

Alex swallows and clears his throat. "What's it like?"

"You've seen it, idiot."

"That was five years ago. What's it look like now?"

"There's nice houses everywhere. And a beauty salon across the road," she says with a surprising amount of patience. "It's the same."

Alex bites the inside of his cheek. "Sounds boring."

"It is boring. It's just a school for rich white kids, Alex." Reilly says.

"Yeah, I know," Alex says quietly. He remembers the brick façade and the blocky main building, functional and unglamorous.

"Guess what? Mom says she might take me to meet her mom," Reilly says. "A grandparent, imagine that."

Alex stares across the room, bewildered. "Why the fuck would she do that?"

"She thinks they might appreciate meeting the kid who  _wasn't_  born out of wedlock," Reilly says, and he knows she's joking but it still sounds cruel.

"They might appreciate it?" Alex says.

"I know, right? Fuck them, but whatever. She goes over there all the time now, apparently." Reilly says.

Alex just stands there, blinking hard until he doesn't feel so sick anymore.

"Relax, Alex. I'm not going over there. They didn't care about Mom and Dad, why should I care about them?"

"It's bullshit," Alex says. His mom's not the bad guy, not in any version of this story - but the thought of her going back to the people who'd rejected even the thought of his existence doesn't sit right.

"She was all alone, you know," Reilly says quietly, as if she knows exactly what he's thinking. "Dad fucked her over. She deserves all these nice things, she worked all her life for them."

"I know that," Alex says, voice tight.

"Then don't get pissy about it. She had two options and she chose the less shitty one."

"Jesus, okay," Alex snaps.

"Yeah, okay," she says primly. "Wishing you hadn't asked me about San Francisco?"

"Shut up, Reilly." Alex says.

"Okay," she says drily and doesn't say anything for the next two minutes.

It's probably the nicest thing she's done for him in a long time and Alex just stands there, frustrated because this isn't the Reilly he needs. He needs angry, predictable Reilly.

"Anyhow," she says, as Alex is rubbing at his temple. "I'm not going over there, is the point. Maybe I'm just sentimental but I don't much like the people who tried to abort my brother."

"You're laying it on a bit thick," Alex says, with a laugh that is difficult to muster. She knows what she's doing, and Alex isn't sure why she's doing it. Maybe she knows just as well as he does that she's unsettling him. She's always unsettling him.

"Fuck you, Alex," she says but he hears her smiling and he doesn't know how the same person can say things as ridiculous as  _grand plan for assimilation into the Cooper plan_  and things as important as  _I'm not going over there_. He doesn't know how she's real or how they are family. Effortlessy, she renders the last six months hazy, and warps them so that some days, it feels things have been like this for years.

For weeks after the divorce, she didn't talked to him, simply because in her eyes, there was nothing worse than commiserating and letting Jack see how much it hurt. She'd wrapped it all up a lot faster, put her head down and gotten a scholarship so that she could leave. It's the best thing that will ever happen to Reilly but it hadn't felt like it then, when she had vilified him for talking to the Coopers. He didn't have textbooks to shut everything out, he didn't have Benji, he didn't have anything.

And the worst thing is that this is all he can think about whenever Reilly gets sweet and joking and wry. It's hard to forget that at her worst, she'd left him behind. All because in the first month when Jack had still been trying to drink himself to death, Alex would pick him up and put him to bed. It didn't matter; Jack had changed his tune once Lily got over her token guilt, put it on the shelf to admire for later and come back to him.

Alex has stopped expecting apologies and reassurances.

"I'll talk to you later," he says. This is the part Danny doesn't get, the part about setting boundaries. It's as simple as stopping a conversation before Reilly wrings him out emotionally, as simple as not putting himself in a position where he will start expecting apologies.

It's as simple as that.

* * *

It's one in the morning and all the kids are gone. A few 20-somethings remain; the grocery store attendants and the county hospital janitors, the Starbucks baristas and the garage workers - all stoned out of their minds, talking among themselves and to themselves.

Alex, Benji and Kieren sit on the back steps. An hour has passed, Kieren is coming down from a cocaine high and Alex and Benji remain sullenly drunk.

A joint, courtesy of Kieren, sits snug in his front pocket but he is not brave enough to get high right now. Just the thought of it, today of all days, thinking the things he's been thinking all night, makes his stomach clench. So they sit, him and Benji, Kieren situated in between, sweating in the summer night.

Alex's Nikes lie abandoned in the grass and he's peeled off his socks. Wiggling his toes in the meager breeze, he fancies that the head lolling onto his shoulder is Benji's, and not Kieren's.

"What now?" Alex asks.

"I think it's worn off," Benji says.

Kieren  _hmm_ s in agreement and shifts.

"You okay, buddy?" Alex asks quietly. His shirt is damp with sweat where Kieren has been leaning against him.

"Mm-hmm," Kieren says. "Wish you two would celebrate with me."

"What have we got to be happy about?" Benji says wryly.

Kieren laughs because he's too nice not to. "Man, at least, Alex was a good sport about it. The occasional bit of rercr... recre -  _recreational_  drug use is alright, isn't it, Alex?"

"Not when I have to drive home your cousin because of it," Alex says.

"Relax, I'll drive," Kieren says, nodding sincerely. "I'm fine. See, I'm fine." He demonstrates by surging into a standing position.

"Easy, stud," Benji deadpans.

"Completely fine, see," Kieren says and plops right back down across from them.

Alex eyes the human-sized space between him and Benji with a smile, and is rewarded with a raised eyebrow from Benji.

"Here, you want a joint? I'll supervise," Alex says with a grin.

Benji looks away and Alex likes that he knows he's blushing. His skin is too dark to tell but Alex knows. For all that Benji is vain and absurdly pleased with the fact that Alex was a virgin before him, Alex knows that he gets flustered whenever he mentions a joint. It's not just that Benji likes smoking a joint after sex. It's that getting stoned inspires him to show Alex all his moles after, the ones dotting the inside of his thighs and the expanse of his back, and that he giggles like a madman as Alex touches them.

"No, I don't want a joint. Jesus," Benji bites out.

"Maybe later," Alex says.

Kieren belches loudly. "Benji… hey, Benji. Kristin  _definitely_  lives in Durango," he says. "She's... fuck - so beautiful. I'd want her on my team, you know. Just to be on the safe side." He hiccups.

"It's fine, Ren. I've got it all planned out," Benji says.

"I know, but back up's cool. Your mom'll get off your back, at least."

It's surreal, listening to Benji tell Kieren all the things that Alex already knows, things that he's been hearing for weeks, and which he guards like precious secrets. Because they're his and only his. Alex scratches at his ear and looks out across the backyard, amused.

"She's not getting off my back. Besides, relax, I can deal with a fuck up," Benji says.

Kieren sighs glumly. "'Course you can, you're loaded."

Benji laughs. "Yeah, I am. Relax, man, you're acting like my mom."

"Do you know how far Colorado is? It's real far," Kieren says loudly.

"Yeah, man. South Park's really far away," Alex says, pleased.

" _Jesus_  Christ, Alex, you're a menace," Benji says, even as he laughs a huff of laughter that isn't quite as wry as he's been all night.

"You're a mess, Alex, shut the fuck up," Kieren interjects. "You know how much I'd give to go round the Mountain States with a rich kid? The food, Alex. The food."

"He has a job, Kieren," Benji says as he brushes imaginary dust off his jeans.

"It'll barely be two weeks." But Kieren's already given up. He flops back onto the grass, groaning. "Can you two at least have a drink?"

"I've been drinking for four hours now," Alex says primly.

"Maybe something more than Coors?" Kieren says to the night sky.

"No, I've gotta clean up," Benji says.

Alex laughs. "Yeah?"

"Yeah," Benji says with a look, as if he cannot bear such immaturity.

Alex glances at Kieren, who's staring up at the night sky. "I'll clean up?" he says.

Benji mutters something but it gets lost in the Kieren-sized space between them. Alex leans closer just as he breathes, "Are you being obtuse on purpose?"

"No, I just want you to have a good time," Alex says, just as quietly.

"I'll have a good time once he's gone," Benji bites out.

"Is that-"

" _No_. Jesus, Alex." Benji looks away for a second and when he looks back, he's frowning. "You're the one who didn't want me to tell him. He's not going home if I start drinking and I'm not keeping quiet if I'm drunk."

Alex scoots back, laughing even though he shouldn't be. He's mostly just embarrassed for himself. Maybe they should have taken last week as an opportunity to do something more than just mash on controllers. Alex would feel much better if they had.

"Okay, Kieren. Time to go home, buddy," Alex says.

"Yeah, I think so," Kieren mutters and stretches a hand to the sky.

Alex grabs it and heaves him up. It takes Kieren a moment; he manages to sit up then with a distracted sound, scoops up Alex's shoes and stands up.

Alex laughs. "Thanks, Ren."

"You're welcome, Alex, you dumbfuck," he says, with a labored expression as if Alex has personally betrayed him.

Laughing, Alex lets Kieren stumble inside the house and sits down to put on his shoes. "Sure you don't need some help cleaning up?"

Benji ducks his head and presses his forehead against his knee. Laughing, he says, "Yeah, I do need some help cleaning up, especially because the maid's coming over first thing tomorrow."

"Guess you don't want that joint after all," Alex says.

Benji laughs and things ease a bit. Alex ties his laces tight and turns to look at him. "See you in a bit."

* * *

Alex leaves Kieren in the passenger seat of his Jeep and goes back inside the house. Most of the lights are off and in the darkness, his Nikes squeak on the marble floors.

He finds Taylor in the living room, asleep in an armchair.

"Come on, I'll drive you home," Alex says. "Taylor?"

Blearily, she blinks awake. "Hm, oh yeah," she says and sits up. "Danny was saying he wants a ride. His sister's with him…" she pauses to yawn and voice thick with sleep, adds: "And some fuckhead eighth grader's passed out behind the couch."

Her high heels wobble as she tries to shift her weight from the chair onto her feet. Alex helps her up and for a moment, she leans against him.

"You're unreal, Alex," she says as she rubs at her eyes.

"What?" He shifts so that she's leaning against his shoulder and not so intimately against his chest.

"How do you not have a girlfriend, dude?" she says.

"Really, Taylor?" Alex says, unimpressed. For all that Taylor likes to run her mouth, he's never let her think she can wander into this territory.

"What? I'm in a contemplative sort of mood," she says. "You know, you're the only one who cares about the pictures in Donut, the ones I put up."

"Who else would care about them? You took them with your iPhone," Alex says, not unkindly. "You feel like standing up on your own feet now?"

"I think I might be a bit hungover." She sighs. "My point is this… yeah, hold on." She steps out of her heels and sits on the edge of the coffee table to massage her feet.

Alex leaves her to it and goes to the other end of the room. A boy lies dozing in the space between the couch and the wall. "Jesus…"

"Yeah, that's Malorie's brother. Can you fucking believe her? She just left him here," she says. "Anyway, what I'm saying is… that you appreciate the pictures and not everyone does. Lots of my friends think I'm showing off."

Alex thinks that too, but Taylor's never done anything to make him think that. He just assumes that's the reason. Nodding distractedly, he shakes the boy awake. "Come on, time to go home."

The kid blinks blearily up at Alex. "Wha-"

Taylor sighs impatiently and says, loudly, "Get the fuck up, Aaron. There's a Jeep parked out front. I swear to God, if you don't get up, I'm leaving you here."

The boy heaves himself up and bumps into Alex as he trudges out of the room. Alex looks frowning after him. Sure, Prospect is a small, boring town but seven years ago, he was spending his entire time in his room, playing video games and listening to Linkin Park. "Did you have to tell so many kids about this?"

"What? They knew anyway," she shrugs.

Alex looks at her hugging her knees as she reaches down to massage at her feet. She looks right back.

"Taylor, I was kidding. They're good pictures and I like them. Really." He shrugs and smiles. He's really not sure what else to do when Taylor's looking at him so intently.

"And that's cool." She stands up, her heels dangling from her hands. "I wouldn't wanna live in this town if my parents got divorced. I don't know how you do it."

For a moment, they look at each other. He isn't sure who's more surprised.

"This is my home, Taylor," he says carefully and slowly. He doesn't think she is cruel enough to fuck with him and she's never been overtly unkind to him, but suddenly he isn't too sure.

"Yeah, I know," she nods slowly.

"What?" Alex asks. It's well past one o' clock now and they should be going, but maybe it's because it's the middle of the night that Alex is still listening. "What is it?"

"It's just…" she says, "I mean, about Danny Cooper. My dad told me to be careful. I spend all day thinking someone's gonna throw a brick through the windows."

"Nobody's throwing a brick through the windows, Taylor," Alex says, rubbing a hand across his face. "And if somebody does, they're not going be aiming for you."

Taylor folds her arms across her chest and grimaces. "Exactly. What I'm saying is you've got a good thing going. You're good with all the numbers and my dad's never gonna fire you. Just… don't hang around Danny Cooper."

"Oh," Alex says and tucks his hands into his pockets. He decidedly does not want to hear this.

"You don't need to stick your neck out for him. He doesn't even like us, Alex. Don't talk to him," she says and exhales deeply. "Listen, I'm not being a bitch. I'm sure Danny's a good guy but you're a real good guy, Alex. You remember everyone's birthdays, for fuck's sake. You don't need to get mixed up in this."

It's 1.20 AM. His phone buzzes with a message and Alex clears his throat. For a moment, he's on the brink of asking 'Don't you think he needs help?'. He doesn't know why he even thinks to ask it. It's not like helping Danny Cooper is the priority. Instead, he nods. "Let's go."

"Just think about it, okay?" Taylor says.

* * *

He doesn't think about it. Instead, he stands by the Jeep and checks his phone.

It's a message from Reilly:  _Good night_. Then, as he looks at the screen, another message:  _Love you_.

Alex just stares at it. There's no doubt in his mind that she means it, just as there is no doubt in his mind that she's going to call him again and next time, she won't let him hang up so easily.

And for a moment, it's all so fucking muddled. Taylor, the phone buzzing in his hand as Reilly sends another message. He tucks it back in his pocket without looking.

In the backyard, past the pool, he finds Janey in the pool chair, sitting with a pizza box, a half-empty bottle of whisky and a drunk Danny Cooper – sitting with infinite patience as if she has happened upon the scene and all these things are merely the set pieces of someone else's life.

Alex touches her shoulder and she turns for half a moment, eyebrows raised, always prepared.

Her shoes scrape against the asphalt as she gets up and disappears round the side of the house. Alex looks at Danny and Danny looks right back, arms folded across his chest, leaning against the garage door as if it is the only thing keeping him upright.

Alex doesn't want to touch Danny Cooper but he goes to him anyway because he looks like he might stumble. And he doesn't have to touch Danny. Danny touches him, shoves against his chest as if the only thing he wants is for Alex to stay away.

He knocks himself off balance and Alex doesn't touch him, lets him stumble and catch himself against the garage door.

Far past them, the night goes on and here, Danny looks at Alex as if he only wants him to stay away.

So Alex does. Picks up the bottle of Jack and goes back to his car, his fingers white around the neck of the bottle.

* * *

Kieren dozes in the passenger seat. Taylor, Janey, Aaron and Danny sit shoulder-to-shoulder in the back. A sleepy quiet descends. Alex drops Danny off first.

* * *

He looks at the bottle, not for too long, although it seems like a long time to him. Then he finds himself an empty lot and in the middle of a sleeping town, he flings it hard enough to shatter it.

He feels nothing, not that he expects to feel anything or even  _wants_  to feel anything.

Danny means nothing to him, a bottle of Jack doesn't mean anything to him. But watching the ground absorb the whiskey until it is nothing more than a dark patch in the soil means plenty to him.

He likes the glint of fluorescents on the broken glass, because it's two in the morning and he's in a contemplative sort of mood. And he quite likes looking at the glass and thinking nothing except  _entropy, entropy, entropy._ It amuses him, because he has no patience for people who have contemplative sort of moods but he stands there anyway, warm desert breeze ruffling his hair.

He gives himself ten minutes. Then he goes back to Benji dozing in bed and lights a joint. He takes off his clothes, because it always pays to be vigilant. Finally, finally, at two in the morning, he gets in bed and breathes against his boyfriend's shoulder blade until he finally stirs awake and kisses the dust off Alex's neck.


	10. Chapter 10

**CHAPTER 10**

It's 4 in the morning when Alex leaves Benji's house, 4:21 when he crawls into bed and precisely 6:30 when his alarm rings. He wakes up to a room stifling with heat. For a long, long time, he lies there, his eyes itching with dryness and his scalp prickling with sweat. It's uncomfortable but not so much that he doesn't drift off again after a few minutes.

A knock on his door brings him back.

"Alex, you're late," Lily calls from the other side.

"I'm  _not_ ," he says to his pillow. He's never late, he hasn't been late to work in two whole years.

He forces his eyes open and stares at his room with sleep-deprived despair. He has five hours of work ahead of him and pain radiates from his back even as he lies immobile on his bed. They shouldn't fuck when they're high. Never again.

"Fuck," he groans as he sits up in his bed. His sheets stick to his body and the window, slid open a full four fucking inches, offends him. "Fuck," he says, with emphasis to his room.

* * *

His and Reilly's room, actually. There is a space of five feet between their beds and most of it is occupied by two dressers, both of which belong to the double bed in Jack's room. There is a chifforobe against the wall opposite, protruding two inches into the bathroom doorway so that it catches Reilly's elbow whenever she goes into the bathroom – and a carpet, old and grey, with a distinctive cloying smell.

They'd had to move quickly. Alex didn't want to pay movers and there'd been only one day in the week that Benji could help him. So he'd left the carpet, and every time he comes into the room and smells that smell, or finds another red bump of mysterious origin on his ankle, he regrets the carpet and the sequence of events that brought him to this room with his sister's entire being concentrated five feet from him.

And any other day, Alex makes sure to never think about it but today, he looks at Reilly's bed and he  _sighs_.

And as if his day hasn't already begun badly, he cannot take back that sigh.

* * *

He can't sit at the kitchen table because there is no leg space. He can't sit on the counter because his head knocks against the cabinets.

So he sits outside, on the back-steps. And today, he eats cereal and regrets ever smoking a joint last night. "Fuck," he says loudly. He is so tired, the earth lurches under his feet every few minutes.

"Alex?" Lily says, her voice muffled by the closed back door. When he doesn't reply, the door opens with an almighty creak. "Alex? Come have breakfast with us."

Alex is exhausted enough to oblige. His ass would prefer a chair over concrete this morning anyway.

A bottle of American Honey dominates the kitchen table and Alex stares at the outline of the wild turkey until his vision goes blurry.

Lily sets a fried egg sandwich in front of him and he looks at it helplessly, too tired to protest.

"Alex, are you alright?" Lily asks as she sits down across from him. She's already dressed for work.

"He's fine," Jack says, his voice muffled from behind a paperback. "Look at him, he had a good time for once."

Yes, but amazingly, he despises Jack more than usual this morning.

"Do you want some coffee?" Lily asks, carefully. Her curly hair is in a braid this morning and a few strands fall into her face. He coughs hard and squeezes his eyes until he sees spots, and forgets to answer her question.

"I know that look. Had a bit too much to drink, huh?" Jack says. The book comes down.

"God," Alex says softly, just to remind himself that he is awake and that anything he decides to say, other people can hear. He stares at the egg congealing on his plate.

"You came home pretty late," Lily says.

He turns to her and stares until Jack clears his throat. Sluggishly, Alex turns to him and says, "Reilly called."

"That's great. She's been trying to get a hold of you for a couple of days now," Lily says.

"She knows my cell number," Alex says.

Jack taps the cover of his book and nods. "Told her that. She acted like she couldn't hear me."

"Oh," Alex says, confused.

Jack shrugs his shoulders as if to say  _I know, right?_  And Alex must be really hung-over if he is inspiring such displays of camaraderie.

He looks back at the wild turkey and waits for the book to come back up and for Lily to leave, so that he can get rid of the egg. But nothing happens. The book doesn't come back up and when Alex glances at his father out of the corner of his eye, their eyes meet.

"What?" Alex says, exasperated.

"It's a good thing you went out," Jack says.

Fireworks of pain go off in his head. Not only is this a miserable morning, it's a weird one too. He cannot escape Jack's gaze somehow.

"Okay," Alex says carefully.

"Was he there?" Jack asks. The finger marking his place in the book comes away and it falls shut.

" _Who?_ " He doesn't think he's commanded such attention from Jack in months.

"Danny Cooper," Jack says conversationally.

It takes effort but Alex tears his eyes away from Jack and tries not to look as bewildered as he feels. "Yeah, of course, he was," Alex says. "Wh-"

"No trouble?"

Alex blinks at Jack. "What does that mean?"

A chuckle. "I'm just asking a question, Alex."

"It was fine," he says and he cannot manage to get the words. "Why-"

"It's a good thing you're looking out for him, Alex. Does that answer your question? You keep looking after him, like you look after Janey."

"I'm not… what?" Alex says. "How would you know I'm looking after him? And what does that mean, anyway?"

Jack seems to struggle with a smile, and simply shrugs.

"Jack-"

"Can you not call me that?" Jack interjects shortly.

It's Alex's turn to smile. For a second, they stare at each other over a plate of congealing egg.

Jack is the first to look away. In this regard, at least, they're always on solid ground. They know who's in the wrong. And although there should be comfort in knowing that he never asked for any of this, there rarely is.

Jack clears his throat and fixes Alex with a friendly eye. "I know you're helping him out because I trust that you would."

"Trust, huh?" It may never be comforting, but it's still plenty of fun. Reilly would love this if she were here.

Jack blows a breath out of pursed lips and folds his arms. "Alex… you can be so-"

"Predictable?" Alex says and now he's grinning.

Jack rubs at his jaw and laughs softly.

And it's easily been months since Alex has said anything with the intent to make Jack laugh. Today isn't one of these days either but still, still, Alex cannot bring himself to look away. Instead, he just looks and looks and drowns under the affection in Jack's eyes.

Yeah, it always feels good until the next time he's getting patronized about not going to college or being a fucking donkey.

Alex clears his throat and looks away.

"Alex," Jack says quietly. "I have my reservations about families that don't know how to treat their own children. Just be careful," he says.

But Alex cannot take this seriously. "Don't know how to treat their own children, huh?" And it's not as much fun this time around.

Instead, Jack's mouth goes tight. "I don't understand you, Alex."

Alex is 21. He's above saying something as immature as 'Clearly'. Maybe two years ago.

"I've done my best to be fair to you with everything that's been going on," Jack says. "I don't understand why you're still punishing me for it."

Alex looks at Jack in amazement. "I'm punishing _you_?" His hangover seems like something far off suddenly. Forgotten, because this is the stuff of dreams. And Alex is thrilled that he has an excuse to say it, even as his insides tremble with indecision. "That's real weird, Jack, because that's not what's been happening at all."

And even though these are words he has been wanting to say for weeks, the set of Jack's jaw makes his nerve waver.

"You're always so ready to be the victim, Alex," Jack says softly. "You need to shake off this inertia."

Empty disappointment grips Alex . "Okay, Jack. I'm going to work then." He pushes the plate away and the yolk of his over-easy egg bursts.

"Lily and I are going on a trip for a few days," Jack says.

Alex pressed his palms flat against his thighs and tired, tired, forces himself to sit still. "Where?"

"Albuquerque," Jack says patiently.

It's futile to ask, but Alex asks anyway. "Why? What's wrong?"

"Nothing' s wrong. We-"

"Are you going to meet her family or something?" Alex says, just for the fuck of it.

Jack closes his eyes for a second and shakes his head. "No, Alex, I'm not going to meet her family. I've already met her family."

Alex doesn't know why he bothers to fight Jack. He always loses. "Then what?" He mutters.

"Lily just needs a break."

Alex doesn't bother to hide his disgust. "A break? Why didn't you go when Reilly was still here?" With a brittle smile, he asks: "Were you waiting for her to leave?"

Jack scratches at his jaw and gives Alex a long, tolerant look. "No, I wasn't."

It doesn't matter. Jack's playing the long game, and Alex's going to fall soon enough. It won't be long before he's been being shown out the door too. And it chips at him every time he thinks about it, brutally.

"Alex, I don't know how to make you understand. This was all for the best," Jack says. "All of it."

"All of it?" Alex asks.

"Yes, all of it," Jack says. His tone does not invite argument and Alex does not want to argue. He cannot make Jack understand.

"How long are you going for?" Alex asks. His hands sit awkward on his knee and he doesn't know what to do with himself. Under Jack's gaze, he feels all wrong. He doesn't  _want_  Jack to look at him, when all the things he sees are so skewed. What has Alex done to make him think that he likes spending his days with a stone lodged in his throat, anyway?

"A week," Jack says.

"Because Lily needs a break?" Alex asks and he smiles despite how sick he feels.

Jack just nods. He's already checked out of this conversation.

"When do I get my vacation then?" Alex asks.

Jack laughs. "Alex, you can take a vacation whenever you like. Donut can survive without you for a week."

And Alex has heard much worse but for some reason,  _this_  is what makes his breakfast roil in his stomach. He massages his forehead until his stomach settles then gets up and empties his plate in the trashcan.

And this is how it's been for months now. It's not until his body is trying to make him double over with disgust that he realizes how tolerable the past week has been. It's not until he has to listen to Jack patronize him that the weight presses down on him just a little heavier until it edges just past tolerable.

Alex does end up throwing up his breakfast in the shower, for no other reason than he wants to escape his skin and stay in bed all day.

* * *

Instead, he goes to Donut and inventories like his life depends on it.

It's an hour past noon. The AC drips condensation down the walls and Alex stares at it. Taylor has her Chemistry homework spread beside the till and in the margins of her notebook, she counts the drips with tally marks.

"I don't deserve this," Taylor says to her notebook. Stray hairs from her ponytail stick to the back of her neck.

"Just an hour more, then Noreen'll take over," Alex says. He's been wiping the same countertop for minutes now and he thinks he might lull himself to sleep. His stomach twists with hunger.

"For you!" Her head hits the counter with a  _thunk_. "I'm wasting my entire Saturday afternoon here. Fuck Danny."

"I did the whole morning rush alone," Alex remarks, because he doesn't want to say 'quit whining'.

"Exactly, fuck Danny. He's supposed to work weekends. I  _never_  work weekends. Alex,  _never_ ," she hisses.

"I know," Alex says. "I'm sorry."

"Oh my God, imagine Malorie at the mall right now. She went up to Deming with her parents." Taylor's voice breaks and she groans.

Alex's phone rings and he picks up without looking. "You're up early," he remarks.

Over the line, Mrs. Cooper says, "Alex?". Her voice wavers.

His first thought is that he's forgotten to drive Janey to her tutor's. Then he remembers that he dropped Janey off at two the previous night. With difficulty, he says: "Oh… hello, Mrs. Cooper. Everything alright?"

"Yes, everything's fine," she says with a shaky laugh. "Would you like to come over for some tea in an hour?"

"Tea?" Alex asks as he looks at the sheen of sweat on his arm.

"Or coffee?" she says. "Or no, a nice, tall glass of lemonade?" A nervous silence seems to hover on the line.

"Oh, thanks, Mrs. Cooper," Alex says, with just enough enthusiasm to surprise himself even. "Lemonade sounds great."

"Good, that's lovely. I'll see you soon, Alex." She hangs up.

He doesn't think  _he's_  in trouble but it's also the first time Mrs. Cooper has called him of her own volition. It doesn't really matter, though. He leaves fifteen minutes before he should, amid shouted protests from Taylor.

* * *

Mrs. Cooper meets him at the front door and leads him into the kitchen. All three of the Cooper children look like her, with their thick black hair and strong jaws. Tommy is the only one who has her height.

"What will you eat?" she asks as she takes a casserole out of the oven.

His stomach may twist with hunger, but he knows he isn't here for a friendly chat and the thought of eating something while an awkward silence stretches far past the end of their conversation… "Lemonade's fine, thanks."

She sets a glass, wet with condensation, down in front of him. Alex takes a sip and feels the coolness spread down his throat. Thinks of Taylor in Donut and promptly forgets as Mrs. Cooper speaks.

"How's Reilly?" she says, haltingly, as she sits down. Her hands flutter nervously on the tabletop until she grips them together. And even though Alex is uncomfortable under her gaze, it's nowhere near as bad as with Jack. At least there is reason to this, something comprehensible.

Alex takes a long swig of lemonade and resists the urge to relax in his chair. "She's good. Enjoying herself."

She smiles at him, muted and genuine.

Alex smiles back. "She's a bit… shell-shocked, I suppose. Mom's doing better than Reilly thought she would be." It's breaking his own rules; these things aren't anybody's business but his, but he likes the spark of interest in Mrs. Cooper's eyes. As unusual as all this is, it makes him feel better about the day he's having.

The most he's ever gotten from Mrs. Cooper is a tolerant smile and two lines of conversation.

And even though he knows he is only here because of Danny, he is alright with it. A warm glow, bolstered by the lemonade, spreads through his chest. And it is incongruous and contrary but he lets it happen, even feels a crazy, good-natured affection for Danny for bringing him here, to this glass of lemonade.

"That's good. It's hard for children to realize their parents had a life before them… and after them," Mrs. Cooper says haltingly. Her eyes dart from the table to Alex's face. "It's only natural for Reilly to find it difficult."

Alex shrugs. Her eyes track the movement of his shoulders like it is an affront to her safety.

"She's very different from you, isn't she?" Mrs. Cooper seems to struggle to get the words out. Her voice is thin with anxiety.

"Yeah, she's…" He reaches for his lemonade and sips until she gets that he doesn't have anything to say.

"Sometimes I can't believe my three children are related to each other. That they ate at the same table growing up." She laughs softly and her eyes meet his. "Danny's more like me than his father. You might have noticed," she smiles thinly.

Alex nods, because nothing more is required of him and because he has no fucking idea what she's talking about. The Danny he's seen is nothing like this woman.

He does this thing where he says something and demands that you decide what he means." Her smile softens into something self-effacing and she glances at Alex. "Boys like him do well in the world. He likes to challenge people, he's ambitious. This world is tailored to men like him." She breathes deeply. "It would have been a kinder place if he'd waited a while and hadn't demanded so much from everyone around him. There was just… such dissatisfaction. He couldn't sit still. He demanded impossible things and reduced himself so quickly to a label. Things could have been better for him." She sighs shakily and looks up at him.

Alex stares at her. If it were anyone else who was so suddenly inspired to share their opinions with him, he would be shocked into silence. But he's been around the Coopers for months now and sooner or later, a flurry of unspoken words always comes - as if all four of them are keeping thousands of little words, unspoken and barely thought, under wraps. "How?" Alex asks.

Mrs. Cooper laughs sharply and sits back in her chair. She pauses for a moment, as if she is willing away her nervous energy then looks at him with a softness in her gaze. "My husband's been very good to you, Alex. So good that you feel comfortable questioning me," she says and laughs breathily.

"I didn't mean-"

"No, that's a good thing, Alex," Mrs. Cooper says softly. "Andy deserves good things. He's taken these five years the hardest. He deserved more than he got."

Alex nods on autopilot, even as the warm glow subsides and sharply, he remembers Danny Cooper's palm splayed on his chest as he shoved him. And something protective rears its head and Alex studiously ignores it. "You've done me a bigger favour than you realize, Mrs. Cooper," Alex says and no matter how true the words are, they cost him something intangible.

Mrs. Cooper pulls her hands apart and they rest, still, on the table. She smiles. "We're lucky to have you, Alex. You haven't known us a long time but you've made things better. Janey feels better, goes to school more often. She does groceries with me now. She never did that before. Did you know that?"

Alex swallows hard. "She told me."

"She's such a sweet girl," Mrs. Cooper says with a smile that spreads to the apples of her cheeks. "The sweetest. It's hard to tell with the quiet ones but she's kind." She pauses, as if these words are stealing the breath from her. "It was hard to tell with you, Alex, but you are too."

And it's not that a sense of uselessness permeates Alex's life. He's good at the things he does, he's  _reliable_. But there are times when the condescension rises to a din so that he doesn't realize how sharply it weighs until suddenly, it's gone. It's silent and all he hears are kind words from clueless people.

And he knows that if this were his family, his fate wouldn't be so different from Danny Cooper's, but it doesn't matter. There are pockets in his life, rare and precious, where common sense doesn't have to intrude. Where without knowing if Benji was gay or not, Alex kissed him for the first time and  _hoped, hoped, hoped_. Where he can listen to this woman spin her stories, knowing that if she knew about him, there'd be nothing for him here.

Alex laughs, because how can he not? It bubbles up from somewhere unknown, his cheeks warm. And the weight of the morning is gone, instantly and he feels kind and infinite and stupid.

Mrs. Cooper smiles. "Alex… how is Danny?"

His smile doesn't falter. "He's fine. I see him everyday. Really, he's fine."

Mrs. Cooper half-nods, looking expectantly at him. "Have you talked to him?"

"Yeah, once or twice," Alex says. But he knows Mrs. Cooper expects something and he isn't sure that she wants summaries of their conversations about  _setting boundaries._  "We talked about Mr. Cooper once or twice. He's pretty angry but-"

But what?  _He talks about you all the time? In fact, you're the only thing he ever talks about?_  Jesus, it's as if he's out to make things harder for himself.

"I mean, he doesn't like me that much," Alex finishes.

Mrs. Cooper is nodding along. "Oh… that's understandable. You're very different from him." A comparison is easily the worst possible avenue of discussion but before he can get in a word, Mrs. Cooper says, "It's a temperamental thing, I suppose. It always astonishes me how different you are from him."

Alex has to physically stave off a wince. "Oh," he says.

"He's not exactly kind. He can be very unforgiving…  _could_  be unforgiving. Maybe he's changed." She blinks and clears her throat. She looks past Alex's shoulder and something in the window catches her eye.

Alex follows her gaze to the haze of smoke hanging about the shed. "Is that Tommy?"

Mrs. Cooper shakes her head. "Of course not, Tommy doesn't smoke."

"Oh, of course," Alex says.

There is a sharp thumping of feet on the stairs and a moment later, Janey looks into the kitchen.

Mrs. Cooper begins to clear the dishes as soon as she sees her.

"Oh, hi, Alex," Janey says quickly, her cheeks flushed.

Alex looks in dismay as Mrs. Cooper spills his leftover lemonade down the drain. "Hey, Janey."

"Wanna see something cool?" she says, her words rushing together.

"Yeah, just a second. Do you need anything else, Mrs. Cooper?" Alex asks.

Mrs. Cooper fishes a Tupperware container from a cabinet and scoops in some casserole. "Drive safe," she says as she hands it to him and glances towards the kitchen window.

From over her mother's shoulder, Janey gestures wildly. Smiling innocuously, Alex edges past Mrs. Cooper and lets Janey drag him to the front door.

"What? What is it?" Alex says as he balances the Tupperware container in his hand.

"I was pretty lucky last night. They didn't even notice I wasn't home. Tommy got in trouble though," she rushes. A giggle bursts from her mouth and surprises both of them. "Sorry, it was pretty exciting." she whispers and rushes him out the front door.

Alex laughs. "That's great. Let's never do that again. You'll get me in trouble."

"Relax, you'll be fine," Janey says and nudges him in the ribs in a very un-Janey-like manner. "It's just that yesterday was good, you know? Tommy's letting me use his old phone to text Danny and I gave him my phone number."

And just like that, his feelings of good will toward this day blink out. Alex knows complications, but it's been precisely six months since he last knew how quickly they multiply. And Danny texting Janey, Mr. Cooper finding out, Alex getting in trouble because this is  _precisely_  what shouldn't be happening…

Alex rubs at his brow and forces himself to smile. "Just be careful, Janey."

She shrugs. "Yeah, of course."

Alex waits, waits, waits but she doesn't volunteer any information like she usually would. "Okay, then. Listen, what's Tommy doing smoking out back? Your mom's right in the kitchen."

Janey frowns. "Tommy's upstairs sleeping off his hangover."

"Oh…" Alex unlocks his car and under Janey's rapt attention, stows the casserole on the passenger seat.

"Do you think that's Danny?" she says with her usual steeliness.

"Yeah, I do," Alex says . "I'm gonna go talk to him, okay? Just… make sure your mom doesn't come out there."

Janey nods stiffly. "Don't worry, she won't…" She goes back into the house.

Alex stands with his car door open and half in, half-out, he feels the full force of this ninety-degree day. He takes off his plaid button-down and flings it onto the passenger seat. In a t-shirt now, he locks his car and pulls on his shades, his head pounding steady. Because fuck, this day does not want to get any better.

He tucks his hands into his pockets as he goes round the side of the house. Danny has trampled the tall grass surrounding the shed and sits in it as if it were the most comfortable perch on Earth. The shed blocks him from view of the kitchen window but the plume of smoke lingers.

"Ah, that sweet smell of shitty coffee grounds," Danny says. The lighter clicks twice. He has two cigarettes clamped in his mouth and as Alex stops in front of him, he hands one to him.

"No, but thanks." Alex drops it in the grass and crushes it underfoot.

Danny watches, unperturbed. "I was betting on you showing up before any of them."

Alex frowns despite himself. "How long have you been sitting out here?"

"About… two hours," Danny says, more to himself.

Alex sits down next to him in the grass, carefully out of sight of the kitchen window.

"You're wearing your fancy shoes," Danny says, his breath heavy with the stink of whisky. "Why aren't you wearing your ratty trainers?"

"I was running late. I couldn't find them this morning," Alex says quietly. "Danny, are you drunk?"

"Mostly. Largely. Probably." Danny intones. He seems a bit like he wants to laugh but when their eyes meet, Alex sees that he isn't in a humorous sort of mood.

"You shouldn't be out here. You'll get heatstroke," Alex says. They're sitting shoulder to shoulder and Danny leans his temple against the shed as he looks at Alex. "Where's your car?" Alex asks

Danny head lolls against the shed and his eyes go unfocused as he looks at Alex's shoulder. "Parked by your friend's house. I was on the way there, but I got lost."

"You walked all the way here? Danny?"

"Hm – what?" His eyes snap back into focus and meet Alex's. "What is it?"

"I said, did you walk all the way here?"

"Up where, Alex?" Danny says, suddenly exasperated.

"It's just... your place is a bit far down..." Alex leans away and gestures for Danny to come closer. Sluggishly, he does and Alex points so that he can see just through the trees and past the gap in a row of houses. The rest of the town stretches out over a plain, nearly fifty feet down from where they sit on a massive bluff. "Did you... Nevermind, you want me to drive you home?"

"Why? Am I not supposed to be this close to the  _mother_ lode?" He says, his voice dropping to a whisper. "What did you have?"

"Lemonade," Alex says.

"I can smell it on your breath," Danny says with a languid smile.

Alex's heart jumps painfully with fright, but he smiles back. He shouldn't be sitting this close to Danny. They're not  _hidden_ , by any stretch. Someone in the upstairs bathroom could see them.

"You're gorgeous, Alex," Danny says, frowning. "Don't worry, that wasn't a come-on. I just felt I should tell you."

Alex nods, even though his heart is beating hard enough to hurt. "Thanks, I guess."

"You're welcome," Danny says and when Alex glances at him, he's looking right at him, eyes alert.

"We should go, Danny," Alex says.

"It's really sunny. Can I borrow your shades?" Danny says. His eyes, blue and blood-shot, flutter almost shut.

"My head really hurts, Danny…" Alex says.

"I'll bet you anything mine hurts more," Danny says with a snort. He adjusts himself against the shed, body angled towards Alex. His forehead isn't far from Alex's shoulder and they both know it. Seem to acknowledge it as Alex takes off his shades and their eyes meet.

Danny takes the shades and hooks them in the front of his shirt. "Fuck… look at that," Danny says and lifts his cigarette up in between them. Half of it is ash. "I forgot all about this."

Alex takes it from him and taps the ash off, away from Danny's already stained jeans.

"Sorry I shoved you last night," Danny says as Alex hands it back.

"Were you going to put those on?" Alex asks.

"What? These…? Nah, I got tired of looking at my reflection," Danny says with a pleasant, sleepy smile.

Alex resists the urge to glance at his watch and says, "You had work this morning."

"Yeah, I know," Danny says. His eyes have slid shut and his forehead lolls inches from Alex's shoulder. This close, his jaw isn't movie-star angular, just square and knobbly and imperfect – so that he looks forbidding, but only because his brow is furrowed and his eyes are closed.

"Don't do that again. Taylor doesn't like getting fucked over," Alex says.

Danny taps his knee. "I'll keep that in mind next time I fuck over that self-righteous bitch."

"Why would you call her that?" Alex says, unimpressed.

Danny eyes flutter open with a look of wonderment and sits up. "Everyone on the cheerleading team's borderline bisexual? Except they're fucking  _not_ , are they? Just 'cause you contemplated sucking a dick one time doesn't make you bi, does it? Does it, Alex?"

"I wouldn't know," he says slowly.

"Yeah?" Danny snorts. "'Course you wouldn't. You wouldn't be here if you did."

"Which part?" Alex asks with a polite smile.

"Oh, you're a funny guy…" Danny says thinly. "It's funny to you. Here… listen, you know I was thinking last night… you recall I had a pretty shitty night, and I thought, why does he keep talking to me? What's he after?"

"I'm not after anything, Danny," Alex says. "I told you that."

Danny watches him carefully even as he rambles: "Shh, listen. So I cycled through all the options. Here for a good story? Bored of the girls, maybe? No? Okay… then I got it. Janey helped out a bit. Wait for it... you didn't tell me why your sister's in San Francisco."

Alex looks out at the trees and lets Danny watch him as he forms an answer. "She's visiting my divorced mother in San Francisco."

Danny smirks. "And when did this divorce happen?"

Alex turns to look at him and smiles pleasantly back. "Six months ago."

"And you're not after anything? See, now that  _is_  funny, Alex. Hilarious!" Danny relaxes against the shed again, his hand patting Alex's knee in an almost fatherly fashion. "What convenient timing. I don't oppose the occasional emotional baggage but look there, what convenient timing for all parties involved. Well, maybe not for Mom and Dad McKinley. But for my parents and you and me... now that  _is_  golden. Gold stuff right there."

Alex nods right along, too wrung out to care after the morning he's had, and Danny seems to forget his hand on Alex's knee. They both look at it in bemusement.

"Weird how things work out," Alex says, as if talking to a child. "Here you are, horny and confused. And here I am, gorgeous and  _maybe_  I've even thought about sucking a dick once or twice. Now that's golden, isn't it, Danny? That  _is_  funny."

Danny chuckles, eyes squeezed shut. "Found you out."

"I'm defeated," Alex says, makes sure that Danny hears all the venom in his voice.

Danny's hand tightens on Alex's knee and his breath puffs hot and stinky between them. "Yes, Mrs. Cooper. No, Mrs. Cooper. Right away, Margery," Danny says, sing-song. "Someone's doing their tasks like the good boy they are. And what'll she give you for it? A hug and a smile and a cookie before bed. And maybe things won't be so suffocatingly bad anymore..."

"Open your eyes," Alex says.

Danny does and looks up at Alex, squeezes his knee almost reassuringly. "It's alright, that gaping hole'll feel better one day. Until then, did you know that she's been in that kitchen for hours and she knows exactly who's out here?"

Alex keeps his face impassive, his skin burning under Danny's hand. This is what he's come to expect from the Coopers and just one more display of evasion from Mrs. Cooper doesn't have to matter. If someone he didn't want to talk to was lingering in the backyard, Alex wouldn't want to come out either.

"Everything's just waiting to fall apart, Alex. Just wants an excuse. But you probably already know that..." Danny says. His forehead touches Alex's shoulder and his voice comes muffled between them. "And you're thinking these six months must show somewhere... here, maybe." His hand against Alex's chest again.

Right over his heart and Alex can bear a hand on his knee but he cannot bear Danny's hand against his heart, cloyingly intimate where it doesn't belong. He pushes his hand away. "You're a poet."

One hand on Alex's knee still, Danny arranges his other in the grass and digs his fingers right into the soil. "And you're a clown." Danny laughs. "You're very funny... fucking hilarious."

"The funniest," Alex says and smiles, even though yesterday he didn't want to touch Danny and today, Danny's skin touches him, twice over. And his own body seems to prickle under the touch, even through cloth. He supposes this is what mistakes feel like. "How much did you have?" Alex asks quietly.

"A whole bottle. Delicious. Would have been better if you'd been there," Danny hums against his shoulder.

"I doubt that," Alex says.

"We'd have discussed the techni - technicalities of our situation," Danny says. "And how many times I'd have to fuck you before you'd be ruined for them."

And Alex knows it's coming, but sound still escapes him.

"Twice, Alex. They  _always_  ignore the first time." Danny pulls away to adjust himself and this time, as his forehead comes back, Alex can feel Danny's lips a hair's breadth away from the hem of his sleeve. The bottom of Danny's lip just grazes Alex's skin and he sits there, dazed with heat and wishing he didn't feel so scary calm. "Actually, in your case, they might be desperate enough to ignore the second time too." Danny's fingers squeeze his knee, this time almost reassuringly. "You know what's the best thing about all this?"

Alex breathes in through his nose. "All what?"

Danny laughs, his breath ghosting hot against the bare skin of Alex's arm. "It's that right now, there's a 16 year old girl in that house watching us, burning with insecurity and wishing I'd look at her like I look at you."

Alex turns his head away and looks resolutely out past the trees. This is the very least of all he'd been expecting – this is not even cruel yet, but it still sends his heart skittering with panic. Danny just makes all the things that Alex is shielding seem even more fragile.

"Come on," Alex says, his voice thick. "Let's go home."

Danny's forehead shifts against Alex's arm so that as he says, "Okay," his lips are on his skin.

Alex grabs Danny in a half hug and pulls him upright against the shed, keeps his distance as Danny gets his feet under him.

"You know what I've wanted to do since I first saw you?" Danny says. And his words are muffled and safe and scary in the space between their bodies.

"Danny-" Alex says.

Biting back a playful grin, he punches Alex in the stomach.

He's drunk, drunk, drunk, Alex reminds himself and he keeps thinking it as Danny punches him again. Winded, nearly bent double and cursing, because fuck, he hadn't been expecting it to hurt that much, Alex jerks away. He is big enough to grab a hold of Danny's collar and yank him around to the other side of the shed, out of sight of the upstairs bathroom window, of Janey.

Winded and gasping because  _fuck_ , he doesn't need this today, he shoves Danny right up against the shed. Hard, hard enough to hurt, so that Danny's head hits the shed with a satisfying  _thunk_.

And Danny doesn't stop, his hands push from Alex's stomach right up to his collarbone, exploring and mapping and Alex's t-shirt goes along, rises to expose his navel but no more, because his skin is too wet with sweat.

The world is motionless, paralyzed by the humidity. There is the sound of sprinklers in someone's garden. Car doors slamming intermittently down the street.

Danny's palms skitter over his heart and Alex takes three full steps away.

Face burning with the weight of this day, he asks: "You want a ride home or what?"


	11. Chapter 11

The sound of the car starting must sound through the whole street, but no one emerges from the Cooper house. Danny sits in the passenger seat with Alex's shirt and the casserole in his lap, the sunglasses still hooked in his t-shirt.

"You can put that in the back," Alex says as he pulls onto the road leading down into town. His hands are jittery with adrenaline and he grips the steering wheel tight, feels his skin pinching.

Danny ignores him and rests his head against the window, eyes closed.

Alex's shades dangle from the neck of his t-shirt and it's like a bad omen. Alex was prepared. He wasn't expecting someone safe and low maintenance. But he also wasn't expecting someone crazy enough to touch him like that where anyone could see. With dismay, Alex squints his eyes against the glare of the road. He'd seemed manageable that day behind Donut. But all Alex has seen is a hint of a sense of humor, amidst tight-lipped guardedness and two instances of incredible inebriation. Three, now. It's practically nothing.

Head glued to the window still, Danny chuckles. "Nice casserole."

Alex doesn't realize how angry he is until he says, "Why don't you take it then?" Goading and completely unlike himself.

"Fuck you and your casserole". His voice carries smooth and level under the rumble of the engine.

It takes them eight minutes to reach Danny's apartment building at the other end of town. By the time Alex pulls to a stop, his phone is ringing. They sit, skin cooling, as he stares at Reilly's name on the screen. He doesn't notice when Danny's nosebleed starts and by the time he looks up, Danny's already soaked his discarded button-down in blood.

"There were tissues in the back," Alex says, exasperated.

Danny shrugs and turns to the seatbelt. He struggles for a good three seconds until Alex finally reaches over and helps him out. The ringtone of his phone cuts through the silence and he does not like the surge of crazy annoyance that grips him.

"Anything else?" Alex asks as he holds up the phone.

Danny shrugs and gingerly slides out of the car. "See you."

Alex picks up just as the door slams shut. "Hey," he says.

"Hey, big brother. What you up to?" Reilly says.

He pulls back onto the road without sparing Danny a second glance. "Nothing."

"Thrilling. What're you doing tonight?"

"Reilly, what-?" Eyes on the road, he searches for his sunglasses in the cup holder and comes up empty. "Nothing, I'm doing nothing." He grits his teeth as he takes a u-turn at the next stoplight.

"Sure? Sounds like you're getting honked at," Reilly says coolly.

"I'm not having a great day, no," he says. He pulls to a sharp stop in front of Danny's apartment building. The casserole goes tumbling into the leg-space of the passenger seat, and he leaves it there.

"Come on, you can tell me what you're doing. I don't judge," she says. She probably woke up at eleven in the morning and had good coffee with breakfast. _Goddamit_.

Alex slams the car door as he gets out. "I'm going to get my fucking sunglasses from Danny Cooper."

She snorts. By the time she gets it, he is pushing open the doors to the building. "Oh… you're serious. How'd he get your sunglasses?"

"He just - asked for them, Reilly. It's not like he stole them," Alex snaps, just as he realizes he has no idea where Danny fucking lives. It doesn't even matter. Alex has been expecting this for as long as he's known Danny is gay, just as he knows that here is where things are likeliest to go spiraling out of his control.

Over the phone, Reilly asks. "How's things then?"

"They're fine," he says as he looks down the first hallway. Danny's not sober enough to climb the stairs that fast. Alex just hopes he wasn't drunk enough to trip. "Jack and Lily are going to Albuquerque for a few days because Lily  _needs a break_. And you're in San Francisco and nothing else is going on, Reilly."

His voice echoes down the second floor hallway and amused, Danny turns to looks at him.

"I'll call you back," Alex says.

Her voice is serene as she says, "I'll call you.". She hangs up before he can.

"Did you declare a state of emergency? They're right here," Danny says. He's holding Alex's bloody t-shirt to his face and is bent over, trying to unlock his door.

"Give them back," Alex says. And he cannot believe himself.

He doesn't even blame Danny for nearly falling against the door, laughing. "Jesus, Alex, are you going to wrestle them from me?" The lock clicks and Danny stumbles into his apartment. "You need to relax," he calls.

Alex follows him, his unease a physical sensation as real as the twinge of pain in his abdomen. Inside, there is wax paper on the windows and cardboard boxes up against the walls.

Danny slips into the kitchen immediately to Alex's right. He grabs a bottle of orange juice off the counter just as Alex's phone rings again. He picks up. "It's not even been a minute, Reilly," he snaps.

"Did you read the message I sent you?" she says cheerily.

"Yeah, I did. I love you too," he says.

Danny watches as he presses paper towels to his nose.

"Good to know. The one after that," Reilly says stonily.

"What? No, I was - driving someone home," he mutters.

"I can vouch for you, if you like," Danny says with a smile, eyes half-closed.

Reilly  _hmm_ s as if in thought. Her voice is dangerous as she says, "I'll ignore whoever the fuck that was. Read it. I'll call you back."

"Reilly-" Alex says, and the dial-tone sounds. Livid, he unlocks his phone and thumbs through his messages. The third message, bolded and unread, reads:  _Call you tomorrow. 2:30._

"I'm going to take a shower," Danny says. He brushes past Alex and leaves a peculiar, shallow silence in his wake. Alex can just hear the stirrings of an animal in a neighboring apartment, and people talking across the hall. He's never lived in an apartment. The closeness of the sounds is so alien to him that he nearly jumps when his phone rings again. He picks up.

"I'm sorry I didn't read it, but you know I'm in the middle of something," Alex says, as he closes the kitchen door behind him. "Don't be childish."

"Yeah, you're always in the middle of something, Alex. And it always has to do with the Coopers," she shoots back. "So why are you having such a bad day?"

He looks at the dirty dishes in the sink, the bloody paper towels left discarded on the counter. He is beyond simple exhaustion now; everything seems just an inch out of reach. "If you want to have a conversation, just wait until I'm free," he snaps.

"I'm always waiting, Alex. You're never free," she says.

"What are you doing?" he says quietly.

"What? I'm just trying to talk to you and you're trying to get out of it," she says. As if things have ever been quite that simple, but it's just like Reilly to be reductive.

"I didn't see your message." In a desperate bid, he adds, "Did you know about Jack and Lily's trip?"

"Fuck them, Alex," she says, incredulous. Her voice is so quiet. "They don't matter."

He's heard Reilly say it many times before. About their mother, about the divorce - it doesn't matter, get over it.

"Tell me what you've been doing since morning," she says.

"Why?" Alex asks. She's cracking his exhaustion, effortlessly. Things too bright for his tired mind slip through easily.

"Just… tell me. I want to know," she says.

"I had the morning shift at Donut. I went over to the Coopers'. I drove Danny back home," Alex says through gritted teeth.

She makes a sound, something between a snort and a guffaw. "Why, Alex?"

He feels a prickle of annoyance. "What do you mean, why?"

"Why always them? What's so special about them? Why do you kill yourself just doing meaningless shit for  _them_?" she rushes.

Alex pinches the bridge of his nose. "Reilly, go see some sights, okay? Leave me alone."

"Don't hang up," she says. "Just tell me why."

"What's wrong with you?" He laughs, even though her determination frightens him. It never means anything good. "You don't care, hang up." Again, he sounds goading and childish. It's like looking at himself from a distance, and seeing something he hates.

"I never cared?" she says testily.

"Why do you think I do it?" Alex asks. And running on two hours of sleep, he sits down, his back to the cabinets. Exhaustion shears him.

"You're just…" She trails off.

"What? Just say it," Alex says.

"You're just leeching off them, Alex," she says. "You just like having someone need you for something."

"I like being reliable?" He laughs at her, sharply. And it's a bad enough day that he feels immature enough to say, "I hate you."

"Yeah, I know, Alex," she says, and has the audacity to sound wounded.

He regrets saying it. "I just need things to make sense, okay? And a mom, a dad and kids makes sense."

She laughs, confused. "Yeah, but they're not your mom and dad, Alex. They're just a bunch of homophobes… and you're gay."

"Shut the  _fuck_  up, Reilly," he says. The entitlement with which she brings it up infuriates him. "I don't need them to be my mom and dad. I just need them to be someone's mom and dad." She doesn't deserve to know. He feels raw saying these things to her, because he knows what will come next.

"You don't even make any sense," she says, voice small.

Alex laughs at himself. "Of course, I don't."

"What?" she says softly. "Alex-"

"You asked and I'm telling you. And you're not even trying," he says tightly.

"I don't - I just thought you might have started talking sense by now," she says. For once, she doesn't sound argumentative. "It's been six months, Alex."

He just sighs and rubs at his temple, the familiar disappointment gripping him again. "Yeah, you tell me all the time. I haven't forgotten."

"Don't hang up," she says again. "I'm sorry, okay?"

"Okay, Reilly." Obliquely, he hears the shower turn off in the adjoining room. "Why do you always do this?"

"I just... I'm sorry, okay? I try to understand but you talk crazy and I'm sorry if it's my fault."

Has she said  _Sorry_  four times now, or five? Snidely, he asks: "Why would it be your fault?"

"Maybe we should have talked about it sooner. You don't ever talk about it anymore."

"Just leave it, alright? I don't... I don't want to talk about it with you."

She laughs sharply. "Wow, Alex… fine, go get your hard-on from fucking with the Coopers. Just don't go get killed by a lawnmower, you clueless fuck."

Alex looks up at the ceiling. He's a few months past caring and just a few hours sleep short of finding this funny. "I'm hanging up. I'll call you tomorrow."

She hangs up first.

He shakes, with disappointment and with relief. Because Reilly will never try to understand. It wasn't enough for the first six months but it'll be enough for the next six. He'll make sure it is.

He is back on his feet by the time the door opens and Danny comes in like he isn't even there. He's dressed in shorts and a university shirt too big for him and he smells crisply of deodorant.

Quietly, Alex asks: "When did you last eat?" It's a pointless, familiar question, enough to prepare him for the mess he knows he's walked into.

Danny nods distractedly, as if he's observing a most interesting phenomenon. He leans against the wall across from Alex.

"Are you going to do that again?" Alex asks. He manages to fold his arms and somehow, relax against the counter.

Danny smirks. And there is something in his demeanor that resembles Tommy. It suits him better, the arrogance. Fits over him like a skin. It's all that Alex has ever heard about Danny Cooper come to life in front of him - the Danny that Tommy always tells him about. Nothing like the guarded stares and folded arms of last night. Chuckling, Danny says, "Are you going to camp out in front of my door to make sure I won't? Jesus, you're taking this whole business a bit too seriously, Alex," he says.

"I am, yeah," Alex grinds out.

"Don't worry, Mommy'll still love you even after I get my slimy, gay hands on Janey," he spits.

Alex's jaw tightens spastically. "Don't," he says. The words don't matter to him. It's the way Danny says them, and after Reilly, Alex doesn't have the strength to protect himself. He feels raw and vulnerable.

"Twenty whole minutes, you talked to my mother," Danny says. "Jesus, how their lips would curl if they could see my hands on you."

Alex laughs because how can he not? "You could barely look me in the eye last night." He is incredulous, mocking. But he refuses to back down from this, him. "You sure changed your mind about things."

Danny smirks. "You're so fucking careless, Alex. Talking about cake and tiramisu like you have any idea what it means to hear that. It makes sense now. I thought you had some idea what you were doing but you're just fucking about with me."

Alex scowls. "I'm on your side, Danny."

"Fuck you, like I haven't seen your type before." His smile lingers, as if he is being faced with something too unbelievable to process. "You'll follow along with anything my Dad tells you just so you can  _feel better_."

Alex rubs at his temple. "I'm on your side, Danny."

"You're just waiting me out, Alex."

"I'm not waiting you out," he says and grits his teeth. "I'm just - I'm trying to keep things the way they are. And you going to your parents' house drunk does not fucking work in anyone's favour."

Danny snorts. "Yeah? And what does work in my favour, Alex?"

"Just-" He breathes in through his nose. "I'm on your side, Danny."

"You said that already."

"Just stick with me, Danny. Don't make things any more difficult." He hears the imploration in his voice and feels things slipping rapidly out of his reach.

"Stick with you and together, we'll win you a surrogate mommy who'll make everything okay."

Alex laughs, too shocked not to. "You think that's what I'm doing?"

Danny chuckles, delighted. He is so animated, so different that Alex is sharply reminded of how drunk he really is.

And even though it is the wrong time to be feeling this way, Alex gently thrills. Lies through his teeth and gives into the nervous energy that sweeps him as he says, "I don't need them, Danny. They need me."

He watches Danny's face harden in front of his eyes.

"Feel very superior about that?" Danny says.

And carefully, Alex counters, "You feel very defensive about that?"

Danny's mouth twists. "They're welcome to self-destruct. Would do Janey some good."

"She's not as stupid as you think she is," Alex says.

"She sat there for an hour last night, asking for my number," Danny says, smiling ponderously. "I think she might be."

For the first time, Alex genuinely dislikes him. He thinks of Janey in that pool chair, enveloped by heat and the scent of night-blooming jasmine, bearing Danny's unspoken condescension – and he feels something like hurt. "She's the only one who cares about you."

"She doesn't know me," Danny says. There is something like pity in his eyes. "You don't either."

"She should act like Tommy does?" Alex asks sharply.

Danny frowns, as if Alex's obliviousness pains him. "Tommy knows more about me than you or Janey ever will. He can act however he likes. He's an adult."

And it's awkward for a moment, to be hemmed into the same category as Janey - as if he wants the same things from Danny that she does. "So you deserve to be treated that way?" Alex doesn't know why he says it so defensively. It's not even the lines along which he's thinking, but it's the only logic he can follow, even as he thinks of Janey's excitement by the front door.

"Alex..." Danny says and his smile has long since faded. He just looks confused, frustrated.

"Don't talk about her that way." The lump in his throat won't subside and he stands there, fighting back. He understands the fragile, suffocating hope Janey feels because he's felt it too. But he's forgotten it, or had forgotten it and he tries to forget it all over again. Because it's what hurts most of all; that, in his cluelessness, he had thought things would get  _better_. "She wants to know you. Why would you say no to that?"

He knows then that he is out-of-control, too exhausted to be having this conversation. This is exactly what he needs and he doesn't know why he is arguing about it. Danny saying no to Janey - it means manageable, sane. Fragile things guarded from Danny. Instead, his voice hoarse with memory, he doesn't even know what the fuck he's trying to do anymore.

Danny stares at him with incredulity, his gaze surprisingly steady for someone drunk off his ass. "Why are you here appealing for her? She's a big girl, she'll do it herself."

"She has to explain that to you?" Alex says, his voice thick with anger.

Danny laughs and knocks his head back against the wall. "She'll talk to me if she wants to."

"She's been trying. You've been drunk both times."

Danny shakes his head. "She'll-"

" _She_  doesn't even like parties," Alex snaps. "She only came for you."

"Tell her to stop, then."

Alex gapes. And it's Jack all over again, refusing to understand, not even trying. So offhand about the havoc he's wreaked. "And it'll be for the best?"

Danny frowns. "Do you think I've moved back, Alex?"

"I don't know what the fuck you're doing, Danny."

"I'll leave again and then what? You'll pick up the pieces, will you, Alex?" He laughs, leery.

"Are you leaving again?"

He doesn't even stop laughing. "You used to help out in the school library when you were a freshman, didn't you? Handing out printouts of _The Last Question_  to everyone like your life depended on it. Didn't think I'd ever be getting questioned by you in my kitchen, Alex. I don't owe you any answers."

Alex cannot hide his surprise. Danny'd been a senior when Alex had been a freshman, and he'd been popular enough for Alex to never speak to him - arrogant and confident in the same way Tommy is.

"You remember that?"

"I remember every miserable moment of high school, Alex. And you were pretty enough to remember," Danny says, and looks unabashed up at him.

Alex ignores him, even as panic rears its head at the intent in Danny's eyes. He forces himself to think about the five years of high school he'd spent helping out at the library. Reading and re-reading  _The Last Question_  in class and outside of class and in bed, thrilling as he'd hurtled far past anything he'd ever had the capacity to imagine. It had been enough for him even as he'd realized that he wasn't leaving Prospect. "Have you ever read it?" Alex asks.

"What does it matter?" Danny says. He crosses to the counter and makes as if to reach for the bottle of orange juice. His hand merely skims it and he doesn't move away.

Alex refuses to look at him. The sheer inevitability of this is extraordinary, his own surprise moreso.

They stand, shoulder-to-shoulder and Alex asks, "Why did you come back?"

"Why do you think you can ask me questions like that?" Danny says.

Alex frowns at the wall across from him. "I don't know. Guess I thought we had more in common than we do." He has to remind himself that he's talking to someone drunk enough to feel him up in broad daylight.

He glances at Danny and Danny looks right back, expression pinched.

"What do we have in common, Alex?" he asks.

Alex laughs, his breath hitching in his throat. He feels something like panic but the exhaustion is a too efficient buffer. "Too much, probably."

Tension tightens Danny's face as he says, "Can I touch you?"

Alex shakes his head and rubs at his brow. "Why?"

"I miss it." His Adam's apple bobs as he swallows hard.

Alex cannot hold his gaze.  _I miss it_. He nods, simply because he needs to nod. Trust is a weird specter for Alex, out of reach by virtue of the people he associates with. Jack, the Coopers. Yet trust is exactly what he needs from Danny Cooper if he wants to keep his life safe from him.

Alex grips the counter top with one hand and reaches for Danny, hugs him firmly around the shoulders. And Danny reciprocates by gripping Alex's shoulder-blades like his life fucking depends on it. He frowns, jaded and raw, lets Danny come closer until he can feel him from shoulder to knee.

For the first time, Danny feels real. With all the things he's said, he's underwhelmed Alex. Even as his every exhale against Alex's throat overwhelms Alex.

His heart beats steady in his chest, and he forces himself to wonder if Danny is really as easy to dismiss as Tommy thinks.

It's a pointless thought that wholly fails to distract him from the reality of the situation. Alex counts their heartbeats. Prays that Danny will not move his face away from where it is nestled against Alex's neck and maybe kiss him.

And Danny doesn't.

It is the only reason Alex goes on holding him long after he should have let go. He just stands incredibly still and feels Danny's heart thudding somewhere near his. Viciously, he thinks that Danny doesn't deserve this intimacy after all that he's said today. And he is about to pull away.

He's just a second late. Danny's hand sweeps down his arm and the rasp of his skin on Alex's is unbelievably loud in the kitchen. His fingers close awkwardly around Alex's hand where it grips the counter. Alex waits for, _dares_  Danny to try and kiss him, so that he'll have an excuse to push him off.

But Danny doesn't. Instead, his fingers flutter on Alex's hand. And there is loneliness and desperation in his touch, something beyond the guardedness of the past few days but just short of the arrogance of today. And foolishly, Alex worries  _for_  Danny. How can he so easily lay himself bare before Alex like this? Maybe he thinks he doesn't understand.

Experimentally, Alex touches his hand to Danny's hair still damp from the shower. He scratches his fingernails against Danny's scalp and Danny shivers so hard in his arms that Alex feels careless. Like he has been handed something he is too clumsy to handle.

"Do that again," Danny whispers.

Alex swallows hard and Danny undoubtedly feels it. And curiously, carelessly, Alex traces his fingernails, feather-light, down the back of Danny's head.

He doesn't realize that Danny has strayed away until he presses him back against the counter and Alex feels him hard against his thigh. Not there yet, but unmistakable. His heart seizes in his chest, but it's as if it happens to someone else.

Clearly, Danny isn't stupid enough to kiss Alex. But Alex is stupid enough to let Danny tug him forward until Alex is the one pressing him up against the wall. He shifts his legs wider for Alex, his face still pressed up against his throat, and Alex slots his thigh between his legs.

Danny burrows his face against his neck, safe and hiding so that if Alex wants to see his face, he will have to physically break his hold.

"This is a really stupid fucking idea," Alex says to the wall.

"You don't have to do anything," Danny says. He moves against Alex, little pushes and shoves as if he cannot decide.

But Danny doesn't really understand. If smoking by his parents' shed for two hours is what he does when he is drunk, Alex does not want to imagine the things he will do once he's spent one more week in Prospect. Alex  _does_  have to do something if he wants to keep things under control. And he remembers the desperation of Danny's touch by the shed. He is scared for Danny as much as he is scared for himself. "If I say no, are you going to go feel up some random guy in a bar?"

Danny exhales sharply against Alex's throat. "I don't know," he says.

Alex can just imagine Mr. Cooper's reaction if that happened. He forces himself to think about it even as he feels Danny's erection against his thigh. This is the easiest version of events, where he jerks Danny off, now and every other time. Keep things nice and under control.

It  _would_  be the best version of events if Danny wasn't drunk right now. "Stop for a second," Alex says.

And to his surprise, Danny fishes the sunglasses out of his pocket and slaps them into Alex's hand. "Forget it," he says.

"Call me when you're not drunk, Danny," he says tiredly.

"'Cause you're the first person I'd call." Danny looks up with a wry smile, his cheeks flush with color.

And that's the problem, isn't it? That Alex is most likely the person he won't call. It would be so easy to let this become someone else's problem. Except that the next time Danny enters the Coopers' periphery, it is Alex who will have to deal with him. And next time, there won't be any reason for Danny to listen to him when he says  _Let's go home_.

"Danny-" Alex says. He breathes somehow, a shaky exhale that wracks his nerves. For the first time, the Coopers have made him feel trapped. It must show starkly on his face but Danny doesn't say anything.

He just smoothes his hands down Alex's front.

There is something soothing in the way he looks up at him. And Alex falls for every bit of it - the blue of his eyes, the soft parting of his lips.  _Lets_  himself fall for it because he's looking at someone older than him, maybe even someone who knows the secret to making things easier. Maybe.

"Call me when you're not drunk," Alex says again. He pushes Danny's hands away for the third time that day.

"I will." He leans in again.

Alex puts one hand on Danny's chest and pushes him gently until his back connects with the wall again. "Don't miss work tomorrow. Taylor's not going to cover for you again."

"Who called you?"

"What?" Alex says, even though he hears him perfectly.

"I said, who called you just now?" A small smile.

"Ask me when you're not drunk, Danny."

They stand a full foot apart and it's a small mercy that Danny's shirt is long enough to hide his erection. Maybe if Danny weren't a Cooper and Alex didn't already have a boyfriend, this would be the best thing to happen to him all day.

"See you tomorrow," Alex says. He holds his sunglasses safe in his hands and goes out through the kitchen door. His shirt lies bloody on the sofa but he ignores it.

It is stifling out in the hallway and Alex goes down the stairs, drained by the heat and the tacit agreements he's been making, today and for the past six months.


	12. Chapter 12

Alex should go home and sleep in the precious two hours he has, but something halfway between resignation and panic drives him to Benji instead. There is no one else he can go to.

He finds Benji standing by the garage at the back of the house, drinking a beer as he looks at the Mustang parked in the shade.

"Hey," Alex says.

"Hey." He tugs Alex close into the shade, the shortness of the last three days forgotten. If sex is all it takes, Alex could do this forever. "You know you look like shit, right?"

"Where's Nelly?" Alex says. His voice is rough to his own ears, as if he's been shouting too much.

"Deming. She decided to make a weekend of it."

"The maid gone?" Alex says as he squeezes Benji's hand tight in his own.

"Yeah, been ages," Benji says. And he's grinning, uncomplicated, so secure in the knowledge that Alex wants to be fucked. "I was just about to call you."

"I missed you," Alex says, and means it.

"I mean, it's not even been twelve hours…" His teasing is so achingly familiar that Alex feels a pleasant flush of warmth.

Starkly, momentarily, he feels like an idiot. He has never wanted anyone beyond Benji. He's never wanted anything beyond Prospect either. And he can't understand why no one ever agrees with him. Not Reilly, not Benji, not Tommy. He wants to understand the dissatisfaction that seems to hypnotize all of them but he cannot. They're infected by two wildly different strains and he cannot understand.

Benji presses the beer into Alex's hand so that he can pull down the garage door. Then he takes him to the kitchen and presses another beer into Alex's hand, and Alex's body right up against the counter. Alex looks at him, hazy and hurting and smiling.

"You alright? When'd you wake up?"

Alex drinks the entirety of his beer before he answers. "Six-thirty."

"Wanna take a nap?" He says with a grin.

"Fuck off." Amazingly, he feels himself smile. The beer trails cold down his throat and just like that, he's awake and so tired again. And he regrets the past two hours; his stomach twists with it. Twists again as Benji pops the button on his jeans.

The French doors stand watch and sunlight dapples Benji's brown skin. It's easy to pretend that it is six months ago; for a second, Benji is pretending too. There's none of the restlessness, no moodiness. But they haven't talked since the garage that day and Alex admits now that he is afraid that the next time they do, there will be none of that ease.

"Benji, wait."

He stops with his hands on Alex's zipper. "What's wrong?" He says, calm as if he's been expecting it even though they never tell each other to wait. They never have time to wait.

"What you said at the garage that day about telling Kieren, tell me again," Alex says, even in a way he wasn't that day.

"Why?"

"I didn't hear you out that day," Alex says.

Benji takes the empty beer bottle and sets it on the kitchen island. "You heard me out and you said no. I'm not going to tell him, Alex."

Crazily, Alex's digs his fingers into Benji's hips. Last week, he'd been so scared of Benji ruining everything and now, he thinks he's the one doing the ruining. He's never been sure if the good things are supposed to be this precarious.

"You're beat. Come on, let's go upstairs," Benji says quietly.

Alex kisses him then, and he feels a bit out of control as Benji kisses him right back, pushing him hard against the counter so that he feels the sting and moans into Benji's mouth. He pushes Benji's shirt right up to his collarbone and feels him under his palm, scratching and pinching until he can feel Benji's erection right up against his own.

"Did I ever tell you you're the best thing that ever happened to me?" Alex tries to lighten the hoarseness of his voice with a grin and he thinks he succeeds. He knows he has to talk about Danny, just as he knows that he cannot talk about that without talking about the garage first.

"I'll bet," Benji says. Laughs as he grinds up against him.

Alex lets his head fall back against the cabinet doors, imagines he feels the sunlight warming their skins as they groan together. They rut against each other as if they're at the garage and five minutes is all they've got until Trevor's back with his coffee.

"Upstairs, come on," Benji says.

He pulls away and Alex follows, tripping over his own feet. The back-pocket on Benji's frayed jeans is ripping at the seams and Alex tugs at it sleepily. Laughs as Benji presses up against him so suddenly that they both stumble on the stairs. And it's clumsy and warm, the way it always is.

The air conditioning is a nearly inaudible hum in Benji's room. He locks the door out of habit even though there's no one home and Alex sits on the bed, weak-kneed with anticipation. He tries to untie his laces but his fingers fumble.

Benji kneels in front of him and tugs off his shoes with a long-suffering smirk at the sight of them. There is a snipe at the tip of Benji's tongue but a sound of surprise comes instead. They look down as one at his hand and the cut is so clean that they don't see it until the blood wells up.

"Fucking ouch," Benji says flatly as he drops Alex's shoe.

"I'm sorry," Alex says. The glass from Danny's bottle of Jack Daniel's. "Fuck."

"Relax, I'll be right back. Unless you wanna suck the wound?" Benji laughs and squeezes Alex's bulge, gentle and firm.

"Gross," Alex gasps.

"Be right back," Benji says as he stands up. He disappears into the ensuite and Alex flops back onto the bed, his cock throbbing. His heart skitters but he's not turned on enough yet to quite forget this dismal day. He wants to go back to the garage and ask Benji  _why, make me understand_. It wouldn't change anything in the slightest but maybe Alex wouldn't feel like such a piece of shit.

Benji comes back in nothing but a pair of boxer briefs and a band aid around his finger, and Alex watches him, helpless to stop himself.

"Benji," Alex says.

He roots through his dresser for the condom and lube. "Coming."

"Benji…" Alex says again. "Do you resent that I shut you down at the garage that day?"

"Wh-" He shuts the drawer. "Not everyone wants to come out as a big, flamin' homo, Alex. Nothing wrong with that." A knowing, roguish smile designed to distract. Benji knows how he gets and any other day, Alex wouldn't subject him to this when they were both sporting erections. But today, he can't stop talking.

"But you want that," Alex says, throat tight.

"To come out as a big, flaming homo?" Benji says, somehow still smiling. "We don't have to talk about this right now."

"You were upset that day, when I told you no."

Benji pushes him gently back onto the bed and Alex resists. Stupidly, he resists and they look at each other, faces burning.

"I wasn't upset. I shouldn't have said that," Benji says. "About leaving for good." He grimaces and kneels in front of Alex.

This time, Alex brings his knees snug around Benji's ribs.

"I was just angry with my mom, alright? I meant every bit of it but not the part about not coming back. It doesn't… It doesn't have to happen all at once. I can take it step-by-step. You know, find a place I like." And he doesn't even try to pretend that he's not talking about Alex.

With a degree of detachment, Alex feels the entire town spin on its axis. He is not a part of these plans, he has never been. His stomach twists and he doesn't know what to do with himself.

Vaguely, from some place far away, he decides that he'd do anything to go back a few days, to stand still for two minutes and talk.

Benji's Adam's apple bobs as he swallows hard.

Alex looks at the condom packet and says, "You were right. Let's talk about this later." He shucks his jeans, his face hot. Benji helps him take his shirt off, and he lies back on the bed as Benji slides his boxers off and kisses his cock. Kisses, wetter and longer, until Alex gasps and reaches for him. Benji comes to him, climbing onto the bed to kneel between his legs.

Alex forces himself to forget everything. The day, the time, the wretched heat of this day. Just closes his eyes and breathes shaky as Benji pushes lubed fingers into him, impatient and sweet all at the same time.

"Benji."

He's biting his entire bottom lip as he looks down between their bodies, but he laughs abruptly then. "Jesus, what?"

Alex knows he's out of control, fucking gone. "You don't have to wait for me."

Benji shakes his head. "What? Alex-" Then he gets it and his entire expression evens out.

Benji isn't the one who doesn't share half his day because he spends it with a family of homophobes. Even in his mortification, Alex is elated. He needs to say these things. It's his fault that it's only on a terrible day, running on precious little sleep, naked on his back, that he can bring himself to say something. But it's better than nothing; anything is better than nothing.

 _You don't have to wait for me_ and  _Please, wait for me_. All at once, because why the fuck not?

"Just lie back," Benji says and kisses him.

Alex sinks back against the pillows because gravity is a ten ton weight anchored to his chest. His eyes are closed when Benji kisses him on the forehead. Half-gone, he marvels at this reversal of roles. He is supposed to be the mature one, the one who deigns to tell Benji to get some responsibilities.

His chest heaves as Benji pushes into him, body quivering with tension. Alex lets him hear all the sounds he never dares make any other day. If to grow up is what Benji wants, then he can bear the burden of Alex's desperation for today.

He grips Benji's forearms tight as Benji fucks him. He wants to bruise, to leave a mark on those arms. Just in case his own clumsy apologies are too little, too late, Alex at least deserves to leave a mark.

"Right there?" Benji says.

Alex moves on autopilot, wanting this to go on for-fucking-ever. "Fuck, yes." His nails are clipped too short to do any real damage and he drags them down Benji's arms with relish, laughing and groaning all at once as Benji calls him a dickhead. Alex doesn't have to pull him closer. Benji just comes right along and bites at Alex's collarbone.

When he's not high, Benji is good enough to make it last. And Alex, when he comes, does so with his fists pressed against his eyes, whimpering Benji's name like he would never dare to any other day.

* * *

The sheets whisper against Benji's skin as he slides under them next to Alex. "Any reason you're being more dramatic than usual?" he says in conspiratorial tones.

Alex's nervousness is a pleasant, distant buzz and he ignores it. "It was your shitty party."

Benji laughs as if this is the best thing he's heard all day. "Was pretty shitty, wasn't it?  _Jesus_. Kieren had fun though."

"You have work?" Alex asks.

"In an hour. You do too," he says. He's rubbing a hand over Alex's knee, briskly as if trying to warm it under his palm. "Kieren's been holding the fort all day. He's a good guy." He smiles as he says it, holds Alex's gaze with deliberateness.

Alex smiles despite himself. It's not funny but it's Benji. It's familiarity and nothing matters more. "Yeah, he is." He scoots low in the bed so that Benji's hand falls away from his knee. His skin feels like it's humming and he wants to go again. But he doesn't know what to do. Suddenly, he can't bring himself to ask for sex, much less talk about Danny. "Benji…"

"What's wrong?" he says. He settles his arm solid on Alex's stomach and Alex wants to close his eyes and sleep.

To think that Benji is the only person in the entire world who knows more about him than Reilly does. The only one who knows how some days, Reilly is the only reason Alex even bothers. It doesn't unsettle Alex that Benji knows these things. Sure, he doesn't think about it often, but only because things get tangled if he does.

"Do you ever think…" Alex says, as he slides one hand under his head and looks up at the ceiling. "D'you ever think you might end up like Danny Cooper?"

The lights are off but there is enough seeping in from the windows that Benji can likely see his face. "What do you mean?"

"You don't think he's a bit fucked up?" Alex says. He feels a flicker of regret at having said these words.

"I've never even talked to him, Alex."

"I know that." Alex sighs. "Janey says he was gone for one thousand six hundred and thirty four days. That's-"

"Five years," Benji completes. "I know, you told me." He smiles then and Alex hears it in his voice. "I wasn't planning on five years."

Alex tries to laugh but Benji smoothes a thumb firmly across his mouth and he shuts up.

"Relax," Benji says. "What's so wrong with Danny?"

Alex closes his eyes. "He hates… everyone. He's lonely, I think. He doesn't show up to work on time."

"And it's all 'cause he came out and left home?" Benji says, a smile in his voice as if he's just waiting for Alex to say something silly.

"He's not happy…" Alex mutters.

"How do you know he wasn't having the time of his life in Albuquerque?" Benji hums, he is shooting back for fun now.

"'Cause he came back home and... and he was miserable enough to ask me for sex," Alex says quietly.

Benji laughs under his breath as if it's another one of Alex's lifeless jokes. "I don't know anyone who wouldn't."

"It's not funny," Alex mutters. "He was really fucking… insistent."

"Jesus, did he pop a boner?" Benji says and raises himself up on an elbow so that Alex has no choice but to look at him.

"You're a dickhead," Alex says.

"He did!" Benji says and flops back onto the bed with a guffaw. "What did you do?"

Alex turns on his side but burrows his face into the pillow. "I told him to call me when he wasn't drunk."

Benji snorts gracelessly. "What are you gonna do when he's not drunk?"

"I'm hoping he won't call?" Alex says. It's the truth and not the truth, and it's irrelevant. He's agreed to it, it feels like a lifetime ago.

"Jesus, Alex. How do you always end up doing the weirdest shit?"

"He took my sunglasses and I followed him right upstairs."

Benji widens his eyes comically. "So it was premeditated? You should be flattered."

"He was too drunk for that," Alex says glumly.

"What are you so down about? So a drunk, gay guy made a pass at you? I'd a done the same."

Alex stares at his dimples. "He punched me."

Benji's eyebrows rise. "When?"

"This afternoon. He was drunk." Alex frowns. "It doesn't matter. What I'm trying to say is… it's fucked up, you know?"

"What's  _it_ , Alex?" he says as if he already knows where they're going.

Alex frowns at him. "I didn't exactly try to act straight. He's going to make trouble."

"You sure you're not being too harsh on the guy?" Benji says.

"No, he spent two hours in his mom's backyard today. And I don't  _get_  him," Alex says. He closes his eyes for a second. So far's been easy. It's the next bit that's hard. When he opens his eyes again, Benji's looking right at him.

"So should I go buy some lye or something?"

"What?" Alex says.

"You're acting like we've got to murder him," Benji says. "So he's horny. Everyone is, Alex."

"What if he goes out and feels up some random guy in a bar?"

"So? It'll teach him not to get so drunk."

"What if he gets hurt?"

"He spent five years on his own, Alex. He knows better."

Alex stares at him, wide-eyed. "He doesn't. He was all over me in his mom's backyard. Right where anyone could have seen."

"He was drunk."

"So he'll be drunk next time too," Alex says, exasperated.

"Just tell me what you're getting at," Benji says. He's tracing Alex's collarbone and his mouth is curved, not in a smile but in a remnant of it.

Alex says, "I think I should."

"Fuck him?" Benji says mildly.

Alex just nods.

"Sometimes you really make me feel like a kid, Alex," he mumbles. "Explain the Coopers to me. Just this once."

Alex squeezes his eyes shut and his face burns. "I don't know how to."

"Look at me for a second."

Alex opens his eyes to see Benji smiling. And it's his usual smile, impish and playful.

"It's just me, Alex. Come on."

"I just… I need things to stay the way they are, Ben."

"What way's that?" Benji closes his eyes, but it's not a resigned gesture. There is something raw and trusting in it.

Alex swallows hard. "Enough for me to handle."

Puzzlement flits across Benji's face, but Alex thinks it is more for his benefit. "And what counts as too much to handle?"

"If you told Kieren, that'd be too much," Alex says. Inexplicably, his voice wavers.

Benji blinks his eyes open but doesn't meet Alex's gaze. "What else?"

"If the Coopers knew about me. Or if Jack had a kid with Lily. If Danny hurt Janey or if Reilly ever pushed too hard. That'd be too much." And only because it's Benji, he tells the truth. "I think I'd break right in two."

Benji's leg nudges his gently. "It's alright, Alex."

"Not really." Alex gives up and rolls onto his back so that Benji doesn't see his mouth tremble. It seems a small thing to lay himself bare. He does it often enough. As if Taylor and Tommy and Janey don't see him falter day in and day out. Every moment under their gaze is an exercise in keeping it together. There isn't a person in town who doesn't know about the divorce. The only thing that warrants hiding is that Benji helps Alex keep a grip, that he's in a better position than anyone else to make him lose that grip.

He sighs shaky, exhausted. He dares to glance at Benji and finds him looking right at him. "What?"

"Nothing, you're just… different today." He touches his palm to Alex's cheeks, maybe to console, maybe to conceal. Maybe Alex is giving everything away and maybe none of this ever mattered.

"If you're leaving, you might as well know," Alex says.

Benji blinks. "Jesus, okay... dick."

"I don't know why I said that," Alex says heavily.

"You're such a dude sometimes, Alex," he says.

"I'm sorry."

Benji's frowning intently. "For what part?"

"What I said at the garage… I didn't know you were leaving for good," Alex mutters. "If you are, you might as well tell Kieren."

Benji huffs a small breath of laughter. "Jesus, you're so fatalistic sometimes."

Alex bites back a smile. "Being a grown up doesn't suit you."

"Fuck you, like you're such a grown up. We'll see what Danny has to say about that," Benji says teasingly..

Alex refuses to wince, just shrugs and doesn't look at him. "Ben."

"Fuck, stop saying my name like that. It's terrifying."

"I'll miss you," he says.

"You'll get over it," Benji says gently.

"I won't," Alex mutters.

"Losing your virginity isn't that special, Alex."

"Don't be a dick." His voice is muffled by the pillow.

"I wouldn't dare to in the face of such brave honesty."

"Benji," He groans.

"I'll miss you too, every day until I find myself a new boyfriend. Promise." Benji laughs right against his cheek and it warms something in him even as his heart seizes with fear. To think that this whole thing had a six-month shelf life. Alex had been expecting it to go on forever. Just Benji working on his car, a handjob every day in the employee bathroom, a bed every two weeks if they were lucky, ice cream in the afternoon after work, free frappuccinos for Benji just to annoy Taylor. Without it ever coming to an end.

He doesn't even know where this icy calm has come from. How he can say  _I'll miss you_ so flippantly as if Benji leaving won't make Prospect the exact same place it had been without him. As if it won't be more endless days of bad air-conditioning, Mondays grocery shopping, Tuesdays driving Janey to her tutor's, weekends listening to Tommy pontificate about queer theory. And it's not too shabby.

Except that Tommy is going to college in the fall, Janey in three years and one day, they'll leave too and it'll be Alex doing it all over again with some half-brother or half-sister. And Alex can bear anything if there's just something to lean against but there won't be. After Jack and Lily's first kid,  _his_  family - the one he grew up in will become a thing of the past. No grandparents to preserve the memory, no dog, not even the old house, no aunts or uncles. And it'll be like the McKinleys never existed. At least not the McKinleys that Alex was ever a part of. And if he leaves Prospect, what does that mean?

Benji's fingers, rough from work, drag against the blooming redness on Alex's collarbone. "Alex, you know I'd wait for you."

Alex laughs into the pillow, throat closing. "Really? Today's the first I ever heard of it."

"Don't be like that. You never wanted to come."

"You never told me you were leaving for good," Alex says and horrifyingly, his voice breaks.

Benji looks at him, brows furrowed like they never are. He almost never frowns. "I wasn't even sure. You're the one talking about it like it's a done thing. I just said that. I don't know why."

"I'm not leaving." Alex says, equal parts vicious and childish.

"Okay, I'll never mention it again, then," Benji says sarcastically. "I don't know why you always have to talk in absolutes, Alex. I just thought it so I said it."

Alex lies incredibly still, imagines that Benji will get out of bed and get dressed. But he doesn't. He just lies there, breathing close to him. Alex cannot bear his proximity, his haphazardness. As if leaving or not leaving is a pedestrian sort of decision. Not too different from picking Coke over water.

Alex doesn't have the strength to put it to words for himself, much less Benji. Maybe if he loved Benji, he might try. He's tried for Reilly, but he cannot explain anymore. He doesn't know what possesses him to touch Benji's face, what inspires this gentleness. He is nostalgic for something he's never had, and he fits his hand against Benji's jaw and wishes he had the time to figure it out.

Benji laughs if Alex ever calls him beautiful, says he's too much of a virgin to know what beautiful really looks like. And when he asks what it does look like, Benji always says 'you'. He lures Alex into contradicting him, and beats him at it, simply because Alex is not inspired enough to come up with an argument. They don't do it today. Benji just blinks back at him.

Alex tried it out after their second time, when the nakedness of a body had lost its garishness, simply because he'd never called anything beautiful in his entire life, simply because there couldn't be anything more beautiful than to make him forget. And it is what Benji has always done.

He has made Alex forget those days of running so hard every morning that his legs would try to give out. Of standing in front of the mirror and watching in his face the effort it took to keep his legs under him; falling in the shower that one time and coming out to find Reilly, ashen-faced, her eyes so wide, so glassy . Of together, watching the bruise blossom on his cheek and of Alex never telling her that he didn't remember falling. Reilly, with hands shaking, curling up next to him and telling him to fucking get over it even as her own cheeks were damp with tears.

Benji knows all of it because Alex has told him these things, labored for months to find the words to tell him. What a perfect waste of energy. The futility of it burns sweetly in his chest, and he kisses Benji, pictures that it turns bitter in their mouths.


	13. Chapter 13

**CHAPTER 13**

Lily has a habit, carefully cultivated for months now, of wandering around the house before bed. It's a short trip, a perfunctory glance through the rooms, an effective establishing of herself as an overseer of some sort. There's plenty of presumption informing that particular action, but it is sanctioned, this oversight, by Jack. As for Alex, his days of sitting in the kitchen in his boxers are gone. Perhaps if Reilly were still around, he might enjoy it. But in the end, it's a 29 year old woman walking around her boyfriend's house and coming across his 21 year old son in his boxers. It's pathetic enough as it is.

So Alex stands in his work clothes and eats cereal from the box and sips milk from the carton, fancies that he has found some quiet dignity in this action. He's not out to make a spectacle of himself. He just wants to finish this endless Saturday with some semblance of normal. And leaning his head against the cabinets with his eyes closed as he chews on his dinner, is as normal as normal gets without Reilly. He's doing just that when the light flicks on.

"Whose shirt is that?" Jack says briskly.

"What?" Alex stalls as he shoves the cereal box into the nearest cabinet. He hasn't had a proper dinner at home since Reilly left. He doesn't want to tempt fate and see what will happen if Jack finds out. At ten in the night, tired from work, misplaced concern might just make him fall over.

Behind him, Jack opens a drawer. It's an innocuous gesture, but his briskness makes Alex uncomfortable enough that Alex glances at him.

Jack must take it as some invitation to conversation. He gestures expansively at Alex's clothes and says, "That's not what you were wearing in the morning."

Alex opens the fridge and shoves the milk back in place. "It's Benji's."

"Where were you all night?" Jack asks.

Alex is glad he remembered to toe his shoes off before he came inside. Jack might have had something to say about that too. "At work. Where else would I be?"

"No, last night."

Alex does not hesitate. If there's anything he'd hide from Jack, spending thirty precious minutes in bed with Benji is not it. "I told you, party at Benji's."

"Till four in the morning?"

It's not that unusual for Jack to ask him and Reilly the strangest questions, as if it occurs to him after every two weeks that he still has children. It's just that Alex hasn't been at the receiving end of it for months, especially not when the implication is so awkward.

"Yeah, till four in the morning," Alex says. He considers saying that he was too drunk to drive, but he cannot imagine anyone less deserving of the effort it would take to lie.

"Have you got a girlfriend?"

"No," he says through gritted teeth.

He makes sure to expect the worst from Jack but he isn't expecting Jack to say, "A boyfriend?"

"Who said I was gay? What is that, woman's intuition?"Alex laughs despite himself.

Jack folds his arms. "Your mother thought you might be."

Alex blinks. "I meant Lily…"

"Right." He doesn't so much as shuffle in place.

Alex notices then that he is still gripping the fridge door and his hand flutters on it, he doesn't know why. Jack watches it, watches him. It's been days since Alex has felt quite so painfully transparent."Why are you asking me now?"

Jack stands stock-still by the back door. There is nothing defensive in the way he's folded his arms and his voice is uncannily level as he says, "It just occurred to me that I've never asked you."

"What, while you were in bed? And you had to get up and ask me right now?" Alex says. Something niggles sharply at him but he cannot place it.

"Yes, I did."

"I'm not going to tell you." It is gloriously petulant but Alex can think of nothing else to say.

"Is that a yes?" Jack says lightly.

He places it then, the frightening calculation in Jack's demeanor. He doesn't know what to do with such undivided attention, it is like a splash of cold water to his face. In that moment, he thinks he feels attacked and cornered in this kitchen with terrible checkered tiles. "I said, I'm not going to tell you." His traitorous voice shakes. He cannot reconcile his own shock at this inquisition, hates that he even feels it. He supposes six months of being ignored has made him rusty."What makes you think you would deserve to know?"

There is no trace of reluctant tolerance in Jack's gaze tonight. Even his frown is not damning and there is a frightening shade of control to his words as he says, "I'm your father. I think I'd deserve to know."

Belatedly, sluggishly, Alex remembers Donut. It had been easy enough to forget with work but he remembers it now and glares at Jack. "Is that what you were talking about in Donut last week?"

Jack shakes his head absently. "What about Donut?"

To think that Jack can spout bullshit like that and then deign to forget. "About someone making you feel less of a man. Was that some sort of secret signal that it's okay to talk to you about this?" Alex spits.

"That had nothing to do with you." The veneer of control breaks away. It is reassuring to know that underneath, Jack is still as eager as he always was – eager to speak and eager to be heard, shuffling around, invisible, but always so desperate to  _be_. "I was hoping you'd be clear-headed enough by now to understand that maybe there is a reason my marriage came to an end, but clearly not."

Alex gapes. "I'm too-What reason did you come up with now, Jack?" He feels the urge to maybe punch the fridge and just like that, the angers drain from him and he says, "I'm tired. I'm going to bed."

"Listen to me."

Slowly, dragging out each word: "I don't want to listen to you anymore. I'm going to bed."

"Alex," he says firmly - and it is like being fifteen again and having a second to weigh the pros and cons of walking away. Except that he is too tired even to do that so he just stands rooted to the spot.

"I don't want to pretend to understand whatever reason you come up with." His voice is brittle. "Maybe I don't ever wanna get over it. That sounds pretty good to me. What do you think about that?"

Jack's nostrils flare. "We all make mistakes, Alex. Sometimes, there's a reason."

Alex can feel the furrows etched so deep in his forehead, it feels like they won't ever disappear. "Why do Mom and I have to pay for your mistakes?"

Jack's face stiffens in an instant. Something like fury gathers in his eyes. "What in God's name have you ever had to pay for? What have you had to want for?"

"I want nothing, especially not from you or Reilly. And I wish you two would leave me alone," Alex snaps.

"Because you give nothing, Alex. All your sister wants is to understand and you refuse her that much even."

She has refused him far more but that barely matters anymore. Alex rubs a hand over his face, hard enough to hurt. "She's cutting ties before she goes to college, alright, Jack? That's all."

Jack points a finger at him, childish and accusing. "You've got your mother's cynicism alright."

"For fuck's sake," Alex mutters. "Mom's cynicism didn't do her much good, Jack, 'cause she still got fucked over. Is there  _anything else_  you'd like to say or can I please go to bed,  _sir_?" And some madness grips him then and he laughs, feels very clever. In fact, after the day he's had, he feels positively invincible.

"You're very selfish, Alex." He doesn't mean to say it, that much is clear. Alex feels a surge of pleasure so sharp and ugly that he does not like himself in that moment. Jack gathers himself right back, with practiced ease.

Alex laughs again and this time, there is a hopeless edge to it. He just hopes that Jack doesn't hear it. "I'm just looking out for number one, Jack. Guess where I got it from?" He feels intensely sorry for Jack then, for himself too. Alex does not think he's ever known someone as insignificant as Jack. And to think that this man has a right to him that no one else can claim. Calmly, Alex says, "I know you don't give a shit. If you had, you wouldn't have slept with that woman. You don't have to keep convincing me, alright?"

Jack's voice is thin as he says, "I gave up everything for you, Alex. A lot more than just office work and an espresso machine."

"And look what your teen pregnancy got you. A thankless kid who just doesn't understand. There's a real tragedy, huh." Alex does not say it with any malice. He's four years older than Jack was when he became a father and there's perhaps no bigger joke in the world. Except maybe that Alex will never get to be a dad himself. He's thought about it a grand total of four times in his entire life but for some reason, looking at his father in this terrible kitchen that smells of egg going bad in the trashcan, he wants nothing more in the world than to do it right. To have someone depend on him and not fuck it up.

"You don't wanna understand, that's your choice. But things are changing whether you want them to or not."

Alex leans against the doorjamb and hopes that his face communicates the depth of his disdain. "Things already changed, Jack. This talk's coming a bit late."

"Lily left some apartment listings for you. A month's plenty time to move out."

The haze of the day is thick enough to dull the impact of those words. "So Reilly's not the one cutting ties after all."

"You've spent long enough refusing to accept this."

Alex laughs too loudly, stares right at Jack. "Who says I haven't accepted it?"

"This… meddling in other people's business, Alex. You need to focus on yourself. Leave the Coopers be."

Alex scowls. "You were a fan of it just this morning."

"If you can help that boy, you do that. But there's other things that you need to do first."

"Empty the room so you can make it into a nursery?"

Jack stills and takes a deep, deep breath. "Just empty the room. You're not the only one trying to forget."

"I'm a person, Jack, remember? Not some fucking luggage."

Jack glances out the window and shakes his head. "She made me feel like that for a long time. I won't explain if you don't want to hear it. We're leaving at seven, tomorrow morning."

Automatically: "Hope Lily's break is worth it."

* * *

Alex wakes the next morning and it is like the beginning. The weight of all-consuming, day-ruining thoughts is like a familiar hand on his back. And with a wry smile, he carries it with him out of bed. There's a note on the fridge in Lily's handwriting.  _Breakfast in the oven. See you in 5 days._

"Bye," he says to the note.

It is like the beginning but nothing like it. He has benji, for a while longer at least. And for what little it is worth that morning, he has danny too.

The sunlight reflects off the screen of his phone. A wink of possibility. He carries that too.

That wink and that hand on his back, gently familiar in how they slow him down, bring him dangerously close to a halt.

He sips watery instant coffee, looks at the cartons of books in the yard and the dejected tomato garden, and takes a moment to consider the best-worst case scenario. In the new silence, he says, "They're never coming back."

He smiles to himself, humorless, knowing. And just because he's sleepy enough to enjoy it, he says, "Yes, I'm gay, Dad."

He gives himself a bleary moment of satisfaction. "But at least I'm not a liar." Contentment settles, a steady weight in his gut. Wakefulness follows and he goes to the bathroom and takes a droll pleasure in peeing with the door open.

* * *

He starts the Jeep and cranking the AC high, he puts his hands on the wheel and looks at the house. The possibility remains: of making this hard for Jack, of enduring that look of contemptuous tolerance long past he can bear it, so that Jack will know: people are not so easily forgotten, not ones like his mother, anyway - but if there were a sort that could be forgotten, Jack would be one of that faceless mass. A wisp in the wind.

gone, gone, gone.

* * *

Danny is one of that faceless mass too, for the coopers, but Alex does not understand how. Even in his guarded fear, Danny is  _more_. He has never done anything as bad as Jack - though perhaps, he has also broken a family. Tommy thinks that; alex makes a note to ask him.

It gives him pause. That clumsy mental note-making. Already, things are slowing down. It is like the coming of a storm, this hunkering down, this crackle in the air, signaling danger.

But there is no crackle for Alex. Just a pleasant slowing of the blood in his veins, the too-steady beat of his heart, steady, steady, because everyone else refuses to be. He must be, because a listing of apartment waits for him at home and he will not look at it. Resistance comes easy, a trait acquired from Reilly, easier today because it is probably futile.

* * *

Long after "Good morning," and "No, steam it for a minute longer," Alex tells Danny that she will find him eventually.

Danny rolls his eyes. "Good, I've got you to tell her to go away."

By three in the afternoon, half the floor is crowded with the paraphernalia of some mechanic friend of a regular who is trying to coax the AC into working. Janey steps over a roll of electric tape and winds her way around the tables to the counter.

A smile flits over Danny's face, raw at the edges and just a little brittle, before he leans his palms on the counter and says, "What'll you have, ma'am?"

Janey smiles as if it's the most brilliant thing she's ever heard.

"A hot chocolate's all," she says.

Alex dares Danny to roll his eyes but he doesn't. Just turns away and doesn't look at Alex again. Alex does not wonder what they will talk about once his shift ends in twenty minutes. Nothing, if Danny is to be believed, but he knows Janey will try.

This morning, Alex feels no affection for her efforts. He is tired.

* * *

The sun has set and under the bare lights, Benji and Kieren are dithering in the garage bay, sharing a beer. Alex has brought his papers to the steps leading down from the office into the bay and sits, half-heartedly working out the numbers.

"Christ, I missed this," Kieren declares.

"Did you do coke again?" Alex goes back to chewing on his pen.

"Shut up, Trevor's right outside," Kieren says, scandalized.

In the light of the setting sun, Trevor's playing cards with a group of men out front. Robust working men, like Trevor. A haze of smoke surrounds them and the air is cloying with the smell of middle-aged men and their musky colognes.

Chewing on his pen, Alex watches them. A few summers working construction in Deming and the sun and hard work will make him indistinguishable from them. There is comfort in that, in being safely invisible, but it feels out of reach today.

He and Kieren are the same age and very rarely, he imagines that if things had turned out a little differently, he and Kieren might have gone to college together. Been something like best friends. Alex would still have met Benji and things would be the same and not at all the same.

Alex knows it's a bad day when he's entertaining those thoughts.

"Listening?"

"He isn't," Benji says.

Alex raises an eyebrow at him and glances at the men sitting outside.

Benji mouths, "Fags," and grins.

Alex smiles absently at him. "What's that, Kieren?"

"Trevor's buying me some land. Putting my name on the papers and all that."

Benji snorts. "He's fucking crazy."

Kieren shakes his head and pushes his glasses up on his nose. If it were anyone else, it would be a grating, pedantic gesture but on Kieren, it is unassuming. "No, he's not. I'm gonna build a house on that land."

Alex laughs. "With whose money?"

"The plan only works as long as no one asks that question," Benji points out with relish.

"Dad and Trevor's money. It'll work out," Kieren says patiently. "I tried explaining it to Benji and he didn't get it. See? It's not the money that matters. It's the… what do you call it, the sentiment."

Benji rolls his eyes.

Alex caps his pen and sets it down. "What sentiment?"

Irritably, Benji says, "He's planning on knocking up a pretty girl and spending the rest of his days on a little ranch in the New Mexico desert."

Kieren makes an affronted sound. "I am going to  _marry_  a nice girl and settle down. There's a difference. I'm going to live and die on our land."

"Your land?" Benji guffaws.

"The point is, this isn't a pit-stop for me. I was born here. I'm gonna die here. Alex gets it."

Benji folds his arms. He smiles, in that way both of them smile when they act like they haven't already shared these things with each other. "What do you get, Alex?"

Alex scratches at his nose. "It's different for everyone. Reilly was born here and she hates it."

Kieren sighs. "Reilly hates it 'cause of… you know-"

"Shut up, Kieren," Benji says dully.

"Prospect's not for everyone, Kieren. But I get what you mean. It's where you belong."

Benji scowls. "He only belongs 'cause he's straight and white."

Kieren shuffles in place. "Come on, don't be like that now, Benji."

"Ask Danny Cooper what he thinks about it then. He was born here too, wasn't he?" Benji says.

Kieren rubs studiously at the back of his neck, face red. "Maybe you've got a point."

"Damn fucking right I've got a point," Benji says.

"I'm gonna close up shop," Kieren says and shuffles away to the front office.

Alex waits until he's out of sight before he says, "Jesus, what bit you?"

Benji's neck is taut. "You two just annoy me sometimes," he mutters.

"So what? He likes his home. He's been away for a while."

Benji's face is pinched as he says, "Do you like your home much then?" And when Alex does not say anything, he pushes on. "It doesn't matter. I just wish I understood why 'It's my home' is enough for you two but 'I wanna try new things' isn't."

Alex breathes a huff of laughter. He's heard it enough times that this doesn't scare him anymore. "This afternoon I wanted to know why you can't stay still in this town."

Benji rubs a hand over his face. "I get tired of you two, did you know that?"

"I got that," Alex says. "You're not making a big secret of it."

Benji groans low in his throat and comes to sit next to him. His hand flutters once on Alex's knee. "Just look at them, every single Sunday like clockwork. I spend a day in this garage and it frays my nerves."

Alex follows Benji's gaze and smiles absently. "It doesn't fray my nerves, Benji. Or Kieren's. I like knowing what the next step is."

Benji laughs softly. "There's only a next step for as long as you keep it in your pants, Alex."

"Maybe… but it's worth it." Today, it isn't. But Alex still waits for Benji to meet his eyes.

He smiles. "Yeah, but the good things… they don't have to be one second away from exploding in your face. You know what I mean?"

Alex picks at his cuticle and nods. "Not everyone has a second option, Ben." He has said it enough times but today, he thinks he understands it for himself.

* * *

Alex goes home to make himself enough macaroni to last five days. As the steam from boiling water turns the kitchen hazy, he sits at the table and makes the grocery list.

He does the laundry, scrubs the toilet bowl, cleans the oven, clears the fridge of Lily and Jack's messes. And when he finally relaxes into bed at nine, the largest Tupperware full of mac and cheese cooling on the kitchen table, he thinks he might set the house on fire. He'll probably have to call Reilly first, just to pass it by her. The thought, transient and stupid, flashes past and Alex lets it. His phone is ringing.

Danny says: "Hey."

"What's up?" Alex sits up in bed.

"I'm not drunk."

"Good." Alex feels foolish, reluctant to presume."What'd Janey say?"

"Fuck's sake," Danny breathes. "Do you have to?"

"She'll tell me anyway."

"She said she wants to see a movie. I told her I can't." He is hassled, a far cry from the measured Danny he'd spoken to behind Donut.

It doesn't matter. It will hurt her but it is for the best.

"Did I imagine that you were in my kitchen?" Danny says finally, quietly.

"No… why?"

"I'm telling you I'm not drunk and you're playing coy."

"I'm not - I'm not playing coy. I just wasn't sure that's what you were saying."

Danny sighs quietly. "I trust that you got the message. I'm going to hang up. Will you bring some pizza?"

* * *

There is a spot on his neck that is sticky with caramel syrup. He doesn't notice it until he's in the stairwell of Danny's building, and he scrubs at it with a spit-slicked thumb until his skin stings. There's another spot on his trainers too, Christ. Then Alex remembers the pleasant red blooming on his collarbone from Benji's teeth, and he sits down hard and fast enough to hurt. Thick, gunky despair clogs his throat.

It is nice to imagine that perhaps Danny won't realize that there are five years of life lived and sex had separating their realities, and that between the two of them, the only one who needs help is Alex. For all that Alex is willing to do, it remains an insurmountable reality - that Danny is drunk more often than he's not and that Alex does not know what to do about it, except give him the worst sex of his life.

Alex is afraid, has been afraid for a while now, that he's missed something, been clumsy enough to misrepresent what this is. For a second, he feels careless enough that he isn't sure which one of them is being unfair anymore.

He gets up - and his body, divorced from all the thoughts running through his head, is so reassuringly under control that Alex smiles down at his sticky trainers and feels far too brave.

Danny opens the door in the same university shirt and shorts as Saturday. Alex looks at him and thinks, he probably jerked off while wearing that shirt. He dares to smile.

Danny does too, a practiced gesture, blank enough that Alex likes the look of it on his face. It isn't the same way he'd smiled by the garage at Benji's party as Tommy had tried to do his worst. This is something else.

Danny takes the pizza, goes into the kitchen. Alex wanders into the living space and to the window.

Up close, beneath the paper, there is an X of duct tape on the window glass. Cardboard boxes litter this corner of the room. There is a sofa too, well worn with cracks in the leather. Alex imagines fucking in this god awful silence, not even the rumble of an AC to rescue them.

Rubbing at his eyes, Alex glances into the bedroom. There is a dresser, a futon, duffel bags. If Alex counts that dresser, Danny owns three pieces of furniture. His bathroom is far too small for a washing machine, but Alex's button-down sits, dried and folded, on top of the one of the cardboard boxes.

Strangely mollified, Alex sits on the sofa. "Do you have a beer?"

Danny comes out of the kitchen, chewing. "I'm already mooching off you for pizza."

"Really, where's all the whiskey come from?" Alex says.

Danny gives him a look as if he thinks he is being presumptuous again. "Some miserable kindergarten teacher at your friend's party. She was very sweet, drunk enough to ask for my number. How

passé. Even you didn't do that." He laughs.

Alex isn't sure if the nervous crack in Danny's laugh is real or not. Danny plops down on the couch and stretches his legs out so that he's taking up more than half the couch. He's nibbling on a pizza crust as he presses the soles of his feet against Alex's ribs. Smiles, distracted, as he says, "Still like me without a blood alcohol level of 0.2?"

"I like you better when you're not pretending." Alex quite likes his own honesty, it's difficult to get the words out. But Danny sighs and Alex looks away, embarrassed. He has miscalculated, but it is common enough that it doesn't bother him.

"The two aren't mutually exclusive. In fact... I think I was being rather honest that day. And you were too, as awkward as it was." Danny says, blinking up at the ceiling.

Not awkward… dangerous. Then and now too, but Alex doesn't say anything. Danny either knows or he doesn't and Alex will not be the one to explain. "You're sober?

"Consummately," Danny says and stretches his feet into Alex's lap.

Alex rests his hand on the arch and wills the warmth from his hand to chase the iciness from Danny's skin. His own fingers go cold but still he holds on. It takes him a moment to realize that he is breathing hard through his nose.

Danny sits up and wedges his feet against the arm rest, winds his fingers through Alex's hair tight, but just short of hurting. There is fiery frankness in his eyes but something shaky in his voice as he says, "You don't have to do anything, I told you that already. Remember that?"

Alex frowns. "I wouldn't be here if I didn't want to be." He doesn't know if Danny is waiting to make sure or if he's just afraid. He doesn't pause to think. Just slips his fingers under the hem of Danny's shirt and skims it over his ribs and his chest. Danny's muscles quiver under Alex's touch, his skin warm and powdery with talcum. The urge is reassuringly swift to come and just like that, Alex wants to kiss Danny's ribs until the talcum turns bitter on his tongue.

Danny moves to straddle him and Alex tries to yank off the university shirt in the same motion. He knocks Danny off balance and they steady him, together. Danny with a hand on Alex's chest and Alex with a hand firm on the curve of Danny's hip.

Danny sighs - accidental, Alex notes - and blushes. Then his hands tighten in the fabric of Alex's shirt, his fingernails scrape against Alex's nipple and that's decidedly not an accident.

There's a pause in which Alex breathes against Danny's throat and Danny breathes in Alex's hair. Silently, they readjust their boundaries. Then Alex reaches an arm around Danny and pulls him close just as he sucks the skin of Danny's neck into his mouth.

The tremor that runs up Danny's body is a bit disproportionate and his moan moreso. He struggles a little against Alex's chest and Alex gives him enough space to extricate his hands from where they are trapped between their chests and wrap them around his neck.

Danny swallows hard and for another moment, they breathe together, Alex's forehead snug against his jaw. He's not sure what boundaries need so much readjusting that Danny's forgotten to move. But one look up at him, and Alex recognizes that same sharpness in his face, as if they're right back behind Donut in the dark.

"I'm not going to hurt you," Alex says. His breath comes too fast and he is helpless to stop it. Helpless to stop his rising anger too. "I'm not lying to you."

"I know you aren't." His voice is sharp even though his eyes are downcast. Frightened, but not of him.

Alex thinks he loses his nerve then. Danny's thinking about prickly things that don't belong here - families and loyalties and fragile things that need protecting. Alex cannot find the words to reassure Danny, much less himself. Taking their names here would break the spell.

Alex touches his cheek, does the best he can to try and conjure enough intimacy that Danny will meet his eyes. And Danny does, but only blinks at Alex as if he can't quite see him. Alex runs his hand down Danny's chest, right to the waistband of his shorts, and still he doesn't meet Alex's eyes.

Alex almost laughs then, because he'd been expecting this to go many ways but certainly not this way. He does the only thing he can do, short of begging Danny to meet his eyes. "Do you want me to fuck you?"

Danny nods, once, sharp and Alex understands that it is the best he is going to get.

The blanket is sprawled half-way to the bedroom door, the futon is lumpy. Danny lies back on it with eyes shut and Alex knows then that he has been abandoned, left implicated in this. It is perhaps more unfair even than asking this of him in the first place.

Danny is all wrong too. He isn't scrawny, just slim, and the rawness of his features doesn't fit with the soft lines of his body. He is shaved everywhere and Alex feels like a hulking bear on top of him. Almost laughs too, because Benji would laugh at this, but not at him. Not at either of them, because Benji is not cruel.

Alex takes stock quickly, too methodically for his own liking even though he is interested. He doesn't look too hard at Danny on his back either, it feels starkly stolen, this sight. He hasn't done much to earn it, and it is a starkly beautiful sight because it is clear that Danny is used to it. Used to being watched as he is fucked. His chest flushes and his eyelashes flutter and his lips part and Alex is trapped. It's too fucking easy.

Danny's fingers clench in the sheets as Alex pushes into him. Has the audacity to gasp like he's never been touched before, and it is only then that he opens his eyes, startled, wide-eyed. The room is silent, devoid of both their breaths.

Their eyes meet then and Alex waits, his legs quivering. Thinks of Benji then and kisses Danny on the mouth until he shivers and nods.

"How long's it been?" Alex murmurs against his mouth.

"Really long time," Danny says and it is the truth and Alex doesn't know why it surprises him.

Danny doesn't lose that wide-eyed look and doesn't close his eyes as Alex moves. He hears every intake of Danny's breath, his own breath rushing out of him each time he pushes into him.

He takes Danny's cock in hand before Danny can do it himself, even as anger thrums gentle in his chest. And Alex hates him, hates that he won't look at Alex even though Alex is the one who has everything to lose, and Danny fucks himself on Alex's cock like he has precisely nothing left to lose.

And even as heat pools in Alex's belly and the muscles of his thighs tighten like coiled wire, he fits his hand against Danny's chin and turns his head until they're looking at each other. Danny's face is soft and helpless as he comes and Alex is vindicated in that moment, vicious like he never is.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading.   
> This story should come up to about 20 chapters and the next chapter will be up in two weeks, at the max. Cheers.


	14. Chapter 14

Alex pulls the sheets up to his waist out of habit, but Danny simply lies on his back, wearing his nakedness like he's used to letting other people see. Alex is curious enough to run a hand along the inside of his thigh and Danny just looks at him, eyes pleasantly squinted and hair ruffled.

"I didn't think you were serious," Danny says.

Alex tucks his hands safely against his own side. "Clearly, I was. You only had to ask." His own disingenuousness makes him smile - as if it were ever that simple - and beside him, Danny raises an eyebrow.

"You're not what I was expecting."

Alex closes his eyes and wishes for sleep. The moment is beginning to seem lurid and tacky, and Alex doesn't want to hear anything else. He can feel Danny too acutely against him, his smell and his taste on Alex's tongue, and he finds he doesn't want to move.

"You said you weren't lying to me."

Alex sighs softly.

"I didn't say that you were."

"Good, because I don't lie to anyone," Alex says.

Danny laughs a boyish laugh, as if he's caught Alex in some mischief. "Really? Not even to my parents?"

Alex exhales steady through his nose. For a while, it is the only sound in the room. He pictures that maybe Danny has slipped out of the room to spare them both this but when he opens his eyes, Danny's right there, looking at him.

"They don't matter," Alex says.

"You led me to believe they were all that mattered."

"No, I didn't. Not them. Just Janey," Alex counters - does not add that his sanity matters too. "If they mattered, I wouldn't be here."

For a split second, something shutters in Danny's gaze but then he laughs. "I think you only pretend to be stupid, Alex."

Something eases between them then, now that their names have been spoken. His leg is pressed snug against Alex's thigh and Alex wants him again, just to see what it's like without these things lingering quite so heavy.

Danny moves languid in the bed, his movements assured and relaxed. He conjures intimacy out of thin air, kisses his way along Alex's stubble. His lips, when they meet Alex's, are hot with friction and Alex's breath, soft and careless, stutters. His tongue maps the inside of Danny's mouth and some curiosity, foreign and at once his own, sweeps him and he presses Danny into the futon just to feel his breath come faster.

Just as quickly as it appears, it disappears. Alex rolls onto his back and leaves Danny half-hard and flushed.

"I don't want to lie to you," Alex says. "I have a boyfriend."

Danny laughs flatly. "Well, you get more interesting by the second."

Alex reverts to the usual, just because there is something very prickly in Danny's gaze. "I didn't think there was much about me that would interest you."

Danny laughs. "Haven't I seen that trick before? Self-deprecation brings out the blue in your eyes, Alex, especially when it's bullshit," he mocks.

Danny's tone in that moment is precisely what frightens him, but it is less frightening than Danny being afraid of him. So Alex smiles a small smile. For all that Danny is incisive, he does not scare Alex. "Why do you act like such a super-villain sometimes?"

"If you hadn't caught me unawares that first time, at my parents' house, I might have put on more convincing airs. As it was, you caught me at an inconvenient time. Does your boyfriend know you're here?"

"Would you prefer it if he didn't?" Alex asks. "Then you'd be a proper gay super-villain."

Danny gives him a look at once puzzled, amused and unimpressed. "Twirling my big, gay power mustache? How gay are you really?"

He asks it as if it something that is often proved to him. Alex turns on his side to look at him. "Why? You think I made the boyfriend up?"

"You've been a bit clumsy so far," Danny remarks.

Alex tries not to let the jab land. He knows Danny's had far better sex than this,  _he knows_  and he feels starkly foolish then, for leaving Danny half-hard and wanting, for playing coy like he has any idea what he's doing.

Danny watches him blush with undisguised amusement and his hand finds it way to the curve of Alex's ass. "Want me to show you?"

Alex blinks, face hot. He cannot imagine anything worse than to come undone in front of Danny. "Not right now."

"Okay," Danny says. He moves his hand away, leaves a prickling warmth on Alex's skin, and puts that same hand on his own cock.

Alex thinks he might find it funny, but he cannot laugh at Danny when his mouth is dry and he cannot really look away. "So if I think girls are beautiful, does that make me any less gay?"

Danny smiles, eyes half-closed. "You're not making a strong case against your pettiness."

"What? I don't know the rules, do I?"

Danny snorts. "No, I think you know the rules just fine, Alex."

Danny props an elbow on the mattress and reaches over Alex to rifle through his jeans. This close, sex-ruffled, he makes Alex swallow hard. Moreso, because he knows that he is beautiful. Their eyes meet and it is like Alex has said these words out loud.

Danny plucks the condom from his jeans. "You aren't tired, are you?"

* * *

This time, on his back with Danny straddling him, Alex doesn't feel abandoned and implicated. Danny watches him closely, bites his lip as he sinks down on Alex's cock, a blush spreading over his chest. It is too lucky, too appealing, too much.

Alex's hips rise up off the bed and he is mostly helpless to stop it. He tries Danny's name on his tongue and gets a smile for it. Then Danny tries his name on his tongue and Alex regrets his curiosity. Danny says it again, clever and knowing, in a way that shoots to Alex's cock.

How embarrassing, Alex thinks desperately, to be so transparent. He knows Danny sees his inexperience on his face, in the way he asks Danny to slow down because he is too close, he is about to come, stop.

He comes with his teeth gritted tight, Danny working his cock with his body in a way that Alex hasn't ever felt and which makes him shudder.

Danny doesn't move after, just cleans them up with a discarded t-shirt and plants his hands on Alex's chest as if admiring the way they look.

"You're the only person from school I've had sex with," Danny says absently. "What's funny?"

"Nothing at all, I feel very special," Alex snipes.

Danny meets his eyes with a smile, and he isn't the same Danny who'd been lingering behind Donut, afraid of being hurt. "Alex McKinley, I never even knew your name. Funny how things work out."

"This isn't what I'd call things working out."

"That's because you can't see the view from here."

Impatience curls steady in Alex's gut. It's easy for Danny to be flippant, he supposes, when he hasn't got anything to lose.

Danny lies down next to him with an amused smile. "See, now I believe you have a boyfriend. Someone to tell you you're beautiful?"

Cheeesy, cheesy and Alex stares at him, impatient. "Why? Does that make me gay enough for you?"

He shakes his head. "Nothing makes you less gay. That's not what I meant. I just don't want to fuck another gay guy who can't admit that he's gay."

"Maybe I'm not gay.  _Maybe_  Taylor's got it all right and I'm bisexual."

Either Danny misses the sharpness of his tone or he simply does not care. With guarded interest, he says, "Really? Have you slept with a girl?"

"No," Alex says slowly.

"Would you sleep with a girl?"

Alex frowns. A restlessness is growing in his stomach and he doesn't want to have this meaningless conversation that is about as baseless as everything's feeling right now.

"You're open to it?"

Alex rubs at his eyes and says, "Why? You want a threesome? I'm too small-town for that, Danny."

Danny laughs a surprised laugh. He sits up and flicks the sheets so they're covering Alex. "You were going to tell me who called you."

A small lamp in the corner throws the dips in Danny's back into shadow. Alex traces them with his eyes and says, "My sister, Reilly."

"The one who's in San Francisco?"

Alex narrows his eyes. "There's only the one."

"Yeah…" Danny says. "Sorry about what I said, about your family and divorce and shit."

The AC is on a timer and switches on then and Alex reflexively pulls the sheets to his chest. "Doesn't matter. I've heard it enough times."

Danny glances over at him. "What part?"

Alex sighs then. "The part about  _emotional baggage_." For all that Alex has never tried to hide it, he doesn't have any patience for anyone who tries to put it to words and especially such inane ones. "Everyone knows about it, what's it matter? It's better than pretending it isn't there."

"I'm sure no one says it quite the way I did."

Alex doesn't attempt to hide his impatience. "Danny… I've heard it before. Tommy makes sure I don't forget that he knows."

"What do you mean?" Danny mutters, eyes fixed to the ceiling.

"He and Janey tolerate me, nothing more." The truth doesn't hurt to say. Alex has made sure by now that he doesn't look away from it. There is nothing worse than being like Jack.

"That's not what I gathered."

"Whatever you 'gathered', you did it wrong. Tommy puts up with me because he doesn't have anything else to do."

"What about Janey?"

"I thought you didn't want to talk about Janey."

"I don't want to talk  _to_  Janey."

Alex hesitates then and Danny smiles a small, bitter smile.

"What?"

Alex doesn't know how to explain it - he does not feel entitled to Janey. No matter what she tells him, he never has. Reilly thinks he does but he isn't stupid enough to think he has the right to put her tight-lipped silences and guarded smiles into words for Danny when Danny doesn't even want to hear it. Not when he knows more about Janey than Danny does or seems to want to. It is something too raw to tell Danny, not when he has been so cruel already. "I don't know."

"She does more than just tolerate you."

Alex laughs then, through gritted teeth. The assurance with which Danny says it grates on his nerves. "She doesn't love me, if that's what you're thinking."

Danny glances sharply to the wall and the catch in his breath is as loud as a gunshot.

The sheets whisper against Alex's skin as he sits up, feeling at once cruel and vulnerable, garish and careless.

"You say the worst things, Alex," he says, voice thin.

Alex can't stop. The words spill forth, so painfully careless. "What, you think she doesn't love you?"

"I think you're an asshole." Danny laughs. "What do you remember from before you were ten years old?"

Sitting shoulder to shoulder, the lamp throws Danny's face into shadow. But Alex cannot hide from its light and maybe if he could, it would make sense to say, "I remember the important things."

Danny looks at him, wide-eyed and there is such discomfort in his gaze. "And I'm important, am I?"

"To her, you are. You know it. I don't know why you're bullshitting." Carefully, with a smile, Alex adds: "It doesn't suit you either."

Danny shoots him a startled look, as if Alex might have kicked him.

Alex's anger rises, sweet and unbidden. "What are you so fucking afraid of?"

Tight-lipped, Danny doesn't respond.

"What did you two talk about?" Alex snaps.

"You, actually," he says.

Alex shakes his head, decisive. "What did you really talk about?"

Danny's mouth is set. "She had lots of questions about what I've been up to. I answered them, then we didn't have anything to say to each other, obviously, because we don't know each other. So I talked about you. Or she talked about you, I don't know which."

Janey knows plenty about him that he would rather Danny didn't know. Just as Alex knows that it doesn't matter either way. Janey knows his fear because she sees it plain as day on his face, just as Tommy does and despises him for it, and just as Danny does. Alex is not a liar, he never has been. There is so little to hide. And everything that matters is right there for anyone to see. Alex does not know how to hide it anymore. "You didn't want to hear it. You should have told her that." Simple, so simple.

"I didn't know how to."

Alex laughs then, because it is possibly the most banal and awkward thing to have come out of Danny's mouth since they've met. "Easier when you're drunk?"

For all that Alex can be transparent, Danny is perhaps painfully moreso. Alex wants to hear him fight, the way Reilly and Tommy do, and the way Janey does too, in her own way. But Danny just says, "I don't want to talk about them anymore either," and Alex welcomes the disappointment. This man with his shuttered gaze is nothing like the one he's been hearing about for months now. Fearless Danny Cooper who has chased after everything he wants, afraid now because he is the only one stupid enough to think that Alex isn't the one scrambling to protect and guard.

Alex begrudges him that stupidity - and does it resoundingly. Feels it like something real in his chest. "What about being ten years old?" He is kicking when Danny is already down but Alex at least deserves this: that the one person he's taken a risk for isn't a coward.

"I don't-" Danny closes his eyes and breathes hard. Gives in,as if he has also realized how much he has given away and despises his own weakness. "She doesn't know me. Anything she feels is an obligation."

This time, the disappointment hits hard enough to feel like he's missed a step. But Alex resists the pull of saying something stupid. He's been here before, more often than he would like to be. It is a moment before he says, "She knows how to live without you but that doesn't mean she likes to. She's the loneliest kid I've ever seen."

Danny smiles, subdued. "You were right, this is a terrible idea."

Alex despises this feeling, of seeing the solution so clear in front of him but being so helpless to convince anyone. Perhaps it's the same way Jack and Reilly feel and that thought slows him down. Six months are long enough for him to know that their solutions aren't the ones he needs. It is the wrong thing to say but he doesn't want to pretend - this is the only thing he wants to know now. "Was it worth it?"

Danny narrows his eyes. "You're so presumptuous, Alex."

"Tommy wants to know."

Danny is out of the bed before Alex can stop him, yanking on his boxers fiercely. He's laughing even as he says, "Fuck's sake _,_  why did I think this was a good idea?"

"If you wanted sex, I probably wasn't the right person to ask."

"Well, I know that now." This, he says so pointedly that Alex can't help but feel the sting. "You didn't seem quite so virginal at first glance."

Alex laughs, only because he knows Benji would find it funny.

Danny freezes, mouth set in a bitter curve. At once, the words rush out of him. "I made a life in Albuquerque. I worked hard and every second of it was worth it, right until it came crashing down around me. Maybe even after that."

"Good," Alex says quietly. "I'm glad."

Danny's breath is harsh and they both know that Alex isn't mocking him but his voice remains angry and jagged. "Family doesn't mean much to me, but it's not very easily replaceable out in the real world. At least, that was what I thought until I saw you in that house."

Regret grips Alex vice-like around the sternum. It's too late to rue all the times now that he has used that clumsy word  _replacement_  in front of Danny and all he is left with is a bone-deep and useless empathy. He lets himself say it. "I don't count for much, Danny. I know how useless it is to try and… to try and make it better. Whatever they're trying, it won't work." There is nothing worse he can imagine than Danny misunderstanding him so he says, "Do you know what I mean?"

"Yes." Quiet and careful, as if he is holding back a torrent by sheer force of will. Alex knows the brittleness that carries through in Danny's voice because he has carried it with him for weeks now, just a scratch beneath the surface. And he doesn't mean to let it show, to become a 'project' but he cannot hide it now, just as he cannot ever hide it from Taylor or Tommy or Benji or Reilly. He understands now that Danny has seen it too, in Benji's kitchen as he'd tried in clumsy words to explain how he has also been left behind. "Good, I'll leave you alone then," he mutters. He feels gloriously raw then in the worst of ways, moreso because Jack has said what he has to say and it feels stupid to be sharing these things with anyone when he himself doesn't know if he can stomach them. He gets up and yanks on his clothes in swift, jerky movements so that the coarse cotton leaves his skin stinging.

"If it's all so useless then why do you bother?" Danny's gaze is heavy on his back and his words even heavier.

"If I knew how to fix it, I would have fixed it by now."

Danny makes a sound of frustration low in his throat. "Them or you?"

Alex laughs softly. "I don't think you want the answer to that."

"You seem like the sort of person who'd do all the right things for the wrong reasons. Or maybe the opposite, I don't know. Am I wrong?" Danny says. His voice doesn't sound quite right, as if he is forcing these words out, just as much a defense as an attack.

Alex sits down to puts on his shoes. "You're good at that… words and sex."

Danny scowls, as if he isn't sure if it's a joke or not. "I'd rather I knew now rather than later."

Alex stands up again and blows out a heavy sigh. To think that Danny is so clueless to how much control he has over this. Alex isn't going to be the one to tell him. "I don't think I could do much to hurt you, Danny."

His brow furrows and Alex finds him so tiresome then, in his dogged insistence on protecting himself as if Alex has come at him with a knife. He isn't sure what he's done to convince Danny that he has any sort of power over him.

"Tommy's not an idiot," Danny says, as Alex is picking his car keys off the floor.

"… I know."

"He knew about me before I did." He says it like it costs him something. "Did you know that?"

"No," Alex says. It seems odd then, to have taken Tommy so lightly all these months, but it is not Tommy he is afraid of - open and honest Tommy who has never done Alex the cruelty of trying to hide what he thinks of him. Alex has already done far worse in his eyes than be gay.

"He can be a little shit, if it's anything related to me."

"I've seen it."

Danny puts on his jeans as an afterthought. "Don't talk to him about me… If he thinks you're taking my side, he won't like that."

"I wasn't planning on it."

Danny smiles distractedly. "Taking my side?"

They look at each over from across the futon and Alex doesn't bother answering that. He's said it enough times. "I wasn't planning on talking about you - with anyone."

Brow furrowed, he steps onto the futon and kisses Alex. It is so perfectly unnecessary that Alex forgets to pull away and instead, pulls him closer. He knows, as well as he knows his own name, that he is no danger of falling in love with Danny Cooper but it is pleasant to imagine, for a moment, that he is here for the right reasons. Even more pleasant to imagine that it isn't other people's cruelty that has led him here, to holding this man in his arms and kissing him.

Alex does it again, just because he can and Danny's breath shudders in his chest. Alex doesn't understand why, but there is a pleasant hum in his chest, the thought that if Danny wanted to forget, he wouldn't have picked Alex, he wouldn't have spoken about them afterwards.

He pulls away before Danny's hands find their way to his belt. Danny runs a hand through his hair, looking pleased, gently dazed, as if he has long since learned to make sex more about living than forgetting.

"You're wrong about it not being worth it to try," Danny says. His face is close and his hands grip Alex's biceps as if he is afraid he will not listen.

"You'd know more about it."

"You don't believe me?"

Alex shouldn't but he does, anyway. "It doesn't sound like things went your way."

"They didn't. That doesn't mean it wasn't worth it."

With a hint of a smile, Alex says, "I'll ask you again in a week, see how you feel about it then." It is wrong to say it so smugly, as if he knows anything about the life Danny has lived for the past five years but he says it anyway. Whether intentionally or not, they have exchanged information and Alex doesn't believe that he is wrong.

Danny quirks an eyebrow. "You're trying right now, Alex. You're not here 'cause you think I'm cute."

"You're cute," Alex intones. "You know it."

"Not your type, I think."

"You sure stink of Tinder. I don't have a type, Danny."

"But you don't like me, do you?"

"No, I'm just here to steal your duffle bag and pawn off your washing machine. It's my third job, in addition to making shitty coffee and filing papers."

Danny smiles absently. "You didn't acknowledge the important part. You're still trying."

"Yeah, I am - for the washing machine," Alex says, and just like that the joke loses its charm and they're left looking at each other. "Sure, I'm trying. Doesn't mean it'll be worth anything."

"But you'll still keep trying? To get over it and make things better?"

Alex can feel himself fraying. "Sure." Because he thinks if he says  _Always_ , his voice might break.

"One more thing we have in common then. I'm taking a small break though, for now. Five years is a long time."

Alex allows himself a small smile. "Hope I don't set you back too far."

"I don't think you will." Danny shrugs. "Trying's not all bad. Even has some perks, I'd say." A ghost of a smile, a playful grab at Alex's junk - and the resentment in Alex's chest crumbles. He likes this assurance, even likes Danny when he doesn't look like he's been kicked down one times too many. He just wishes he knew what Danny was so afraid of.

* * *

"Dad says you're growing a beard," Reilly says.

Alex rubs at his eyes and  _hmph_ s into the phone. "Dad's been taking a real interest recently," he says and Reilly pauses for just long enough that Alex's suspicions are confirmed. "He asked you."

"About you  _not_  being a garden variety hetero? Yeah, he did. That's how he asked by the way. Not 'is he gay?' but 'is he not straight?'"

Alex is tickled enough to say, "Maybe he was giving me space to identify however I like."

She snorts. "Yeah, like maybe he knew you're secretly a furry. Or like… a sapiosexual or something."

Alex closes his eyes and frowns at the ceiling. He's got twenty minutes to nap and instead of getting terrorized by Reilly, today, he's decided to call her first. "A warning would have been good."

"We both know how you get when I use the G word," she says. He can practically sense her eyeroll.

"You know that's not it."

"Alright, fine. Might have something more to do with how your coming out wasn't too great."

"No, I love being called an attention-seeking child."

"I did apologize, right?"

"A full eighteen times. A record."

"Fuck off," she grumbles. "It was a bad day, and I don't know why it took a goddamn divorce for you to get things done."

"So it's my fault?" He says, just to hear her scrabble.

"No, it wasn't," she says seriously. "And if you think I don't hear you laughing, fuck you."

The conversation lulls and Alex thinks he might fall asleep to the sound of her breathing on the phone. "Do you think Lily's gone to sell a kidney or something?"

"Maybe she wanted to kill you for it 'cause you're such a waste of space but Dad amiably spent his paycheck to take her to Albuquerque so she wouldn't murder his only son."

"My hero," Alex says drily. "He tried to explain something on Saturday."

"You should listen to him. He makes a lot of sense for a forty year old divorced adulterer," she says with relish.

"Thirty-eight," Alex says and smiles at Reilly's snicker. "He says I'm a cynic."

"Ooh." She is quiet for long enough that it is clear she is thinking. "Old man may have lost his touch. You're not cynical. That's just you being a little shit."

"Why'd he say that?"

"Your sense of humor did die a fiery death six months ago," she says and promptly sighs. "A time comes when you can joke about it, Alex."

"I haven't got a sense of humor."

"Even your shitty jokes count for something, big brother."

Alex sighs. "Yeah, alright."

"See, you're coming around. What was dad saying?"

"Making excuses. Says there's a reason everyone makes mistakes."

Reilly huffs softly. "Better listen to him before his girlfriend harvests your organs."

"You don't think it's weird?"

"Maybe he thinks you're going to kill yourself while he's gone. Not that you would, but he doesn't know that."

"You're real helpful, Reilly."

"Yeah, I'm in a good mood, can't you tell? You called me for once."

"I was bored," he intones.

"Isn't it about time for your grocery run?"

"I've got half an hour." Another lull and Alex carefully says, "You're not cutting ties, are you?"

"Just like you to be dramatic." But her voice is dull as she says it. "No, I wasn't, in fact. This isn't what cutting ties looks like, dickhead."

"If you think you're going to fix anything-"

"No, I'll leave the  _fixing_  to you. No one quite fucks it up like you, Alex."

For once, he is inclined to agree. But it is a strange week. He's seen Danny Cooper face as he comes. Death by lawnmower does not seem all that impossible now. Neither does agreeing with Reilly. "I said it to Jack - that thing about cutting ties. I didn't want you to hear it from him."

"The day he becomes our intermediary is the day I'm giving up on you, Alex."

"Yeah…" he says, too pensive. For a long while now, it's felt too late to go back on Reilly, to reconsider - so he just sits up in bed and pinches the bridge of his nose. "What are you doing?" Again, his voice is too subdued and he wishes that Reilly will misunderstand and say something like pointless like  _watching TV_. But for once, she doesn't.

She takes a small breath and says, "I'm apologizing."

"I don't understand."

"You wouldn't, pea-brain," she says, so quietly that over the phone, he almost misses it. "I'm sorry for making it so you'd have to go to the Coopers."

He knows and she knows and it is strange, for once, to tune into the familial frequency and not be disappointed. He doesn't fight her, because she is right and because she sees that it tires him. No matter how good it feels to have Janey talk to him, he knows that he would never have known her if it hadn't been for the divorce. Secrets aren't ever worth it and even though Tommy has never made him feel unsafe, it lingers, just out of reach. The possibility that at any moment, things will simply break in half, just like last time. And this time, Alex might not have anywhere else to go. "Okay," he says softly.

His hands are shaking by the time he hangs up. He gives himself two minutes to sit there, eyes closed and breathing quietly in the silence of his room. Strange, to think that with her simple insistence on being herself, Reilly has maybe changed his life - so that when he will look back on this years from now, the Coopers will be an irrevocable part of his life, a good and bad one, but most importantly, an irremovable one. Because of the things Jack and Reilly and he himself has done.

And he wants to think cruelly of her, mock her for her apology but it doesn't go any farther than that. The thought itself never comes.

Perhaps Reilly thinks that he is like Jack, desperate to wrap things up and set them aside. He might, if he knew how - he'd suffer that indignity if he just knew how. He might have known six months ago, before the Coopers, before Danny, but he doesn't think he knows anymore - and it's his own fault. He's brought himself here.

He wants to be like Reilly, sharp edges cutting, but still moving. So that even months after breaking everything, she can fix it again. Make him smile and say words that mean more to him than anything else could today. As close to solidarity as Reilly gets, which is enough for Alex. Always enough. Even today, his own edges dull as he slows down, he is glad for this apology. He did not expect it, and that is a small victory in its own right. He did not ask for it, but he has it. For himself now. Something to keep close for later.

* * *


	15. Chapter 15

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the gruesome delay, folks. Thanks to the stupidity of three different people plus my own laziness for good measure, I didn't have my laptop for two weeks. Which means that we are happily two weeks behind on this whole thing.
> 
> If this chapter is rougher than usual (har har), apologies. Thanks so much for reading and constructive criticism is always welcome. Cheers.

The heat of the day has passed and this week too, the sun is setting as Alex pulls to a stop outside the Cooper house. He's already decided that today, he isn't much in the mood for thinking about what he'd been doing last Tuesday. It is far too easy to start wondering how the past seven days have happened - and whether they happened to him, or he happened to them.

The door opens with a sharp crack, Janey fields it like she always does and gets it in with a  _humph_. The door is heavy for her, Alex notes. He's certain he's noted it before but the sort of day it is, every insignificant detail feels like a revelation harboring the key to some fucking solution.

"How's it going?" Janey asks. She doesn't adjust the seat. She's the only one who ever sits there.

Alex should probably tell this to Benji. It's too awkward otherwise, this thought that borders far too close to being sad. In fact, most things are beginning to seem pathetic now that he may be homeless in a month. Including this urge to tell Benji because he has no one else to tell, and because keeping it to himself may bring him completely to a stop. "Alright, everything's good," he remembers to say, five seconds too late, but it'll do. Not tired yet but he's almost there.

Seatbelt on, hair straight and lank, Janey is reassuringly ordinary. Enough that Alex doesn't balk when she goes right back to what they always seem to talk about nowadays. "I was silly that day, huh?" she says suddenly.

"About the phone?" Alex says, just as abruptly. Feels like he is pouncing on her.

They glance quickly at each other, their eyes meet.

"Yeah, the phone," she says. "I know it wasn't the smartest thing. Danny seems to think so too. Besides, Tommy barely ever lets me have it."

Alex takes his eyes off the road and looks at her. Again, she stares right back like she expects his skittish gaze.

"Yes, he's doing it on purpose. Tommy's being Tommy," she says.

"You want me to talk to him?" Alex says. Any other day, even saying these words would make him smile but today, he cannot muster up anything. Talking to Tommy is trivial considering where he was Sunday night.

"It doesn't matter. He's having fun, so he won't listen."  
Having fun and inadvertently helping Danny. Alex blows out a breath and stares at the road. It is difficult to focus and today, he embraces the thought of not figuring things out. Things are tangled enough. Maybe by Thursday, he'll feel up to it.

"Remember when I asked you what Danny was like?"

Alex nods absently.

"You said you'd help me with him, you know. I was expecting him to be more… conversational."

"Mm-hmm."

"Do you talk to him much?"

Alex sighs quietly. "Not really."

"Really? He says he talks to you," she says politely.

Alex looks blithely out at the road. If it's embarrassing to be transparent, it's far more embarrassing to be caught in a lie by a 15 year old girl. "Not much."

"Come on, Alex. You drove him home on Friday, when he was drunk in our backyard. Remember that?" This, said with disdain.

Alex glances at her in surprise. "He was drunk, Janey. He was just... being an asshole. I don't know what you're asking." Or rather, he doesn't have the faculties to know what she's asking, because if he starts thinking about her words too hard, paranoia will start biting at him - and he won't let it. He wants to trust Janey.

"I just - I don't know. Make it easier somehow to talk to him?"

Alex shakes his head, doesn't realize he's done it until Janey goes quiet. It's deceptively easy to forget: for all that Janey may share more with him than anyone else, they don't know each other and any moments of understanding between them are transient and rare.

"Anything you tell me - it's not like I'd tell Mom and Dad."

Alex would like to say 'I know', but he doesn't know that at all.

"But he knows who he's talking to, do you get what I mean?"

For a wild moment, Alex thinks she is being coy. But when he glances over at her, she's just frowning. "If he didn't want you to know, he wouldn't tell me?"

She smiles, swift and solid. "Something like that, yeah."

Wrong, and Alex smiles.

"You look spooked."

"Do I?" Alex intones, unimpressed. He usually expects such dramatic statements from Tommy.

"I only mean - I don't know. Maybe people at Donut say things. I know Tommy does all the time."

Alex lets that mention of Donut pass. "What does he say?"

Janey gives him a perfunctory smile. "Doesn't matter. Do you ever think you'd switch places with me? Just to see."

Alex laughs then, probably too loud. "Weird question."

"Now you're a bit hysterical." She's smiling and Alex says 'thank you' for that. Just once, the words loud in his mind, because she says it with familiarity and with a pretty little grin.

He allows himself this untruth: "I wouldn't switch places with anyone. Seems pointless."

"I would," Janey says. Maybe there is a challenge in her voice, as if she knows he is lying but Alex ignores it.

"No, you wouldn't. What if you ended up some place worse?" It is his own fear, always has been but he only realizes how crass it is a moment too late.

Janey is smiling again, the same sort Tommy blesses him with when he's being particularly obtuse. "Do you really want me to answer that?"

Alex glances over at her. He is occasionally stupid, but he isn't chicken-shit. "Sure, go ahead. We've got a few minutes."

"No, actually. You're right, I could end up somewhere worse." This is punctuated with a hint of a clever smile. Janey never complains, never. There is no need to put it into words, no use in railing against it - for a 15 year old girl, she is remarkably like Alex. She has things in place too, quietly determined, but nowhere near as obvious as him. "Could also end up somewhere better." It is as close as Janey gets to a wink and a smile.

"Maybe I'd try it for a day."

"Being me?" Janey says and now she's grinning even as she talks. "That's a bit creepy, isn't it?"

"It wasn't until you said it."

"Tommy thinks you're creepy as it is. Wait till I tell him you want to wear my skin."

Alex snorts. "Jesus, that'd do it."

"Uh-huh. Anyway, Danny's pretty cagey. Probably thinks I'm going to tell everything to Mom and Dad." She turns to look at him, as if she expects an affirmation.

Alex laughs at himself. He's being led around far too easily this week. A small interlude and she's brought them right back to Danny. "He just wants a break, Janey."

"Probably shouldn't have come back home for that," she points out with dry practicality.

Alex agrees. Of course, he agrees. And over the past two days, he's made it a point not to think about Danny - the things that have driven him back home, his disproportionate horniness, all the things he is so afraid of that Alex can't and doesn't want to pinpoint.

"Is he like Tommy?" she asks quietly.

And what she means is: Is he an asshole? Alex smiles and shakes his head. "Tries to be, but he isn't. Probably was, once upon a time." He takes a perverse thrill from the sheer presumption of that statement, fancies himself a glorious idiot for thinking he knows anything about Danny. For a moment, he actually enjoys himself.

"So he's alright? You like him?"

"Yeah, he's cool, Janey."

"Last week, when Mom called you over… sorry about that, I think."

Alex shrugs his shoulder. "It's alright. Not everything's so simple."

"I heard what you two were talking about. About Danny and all."

"'Course you did." He sighs.

"What I mean is… they don't really care, Alex. They'd rather be rid of him but she wouldn't say it like that 'cause you're not  _that_  much of an asshole, you know?"

Alex keeps his eyes on the road even though all he wants is to look at Janey. He knows she's right - that Mrs. Cooper, voice thin with anxiety and eyes darting to the window, only kept him there long enough to notice. Alex very nearly sighs again but he shuts up at the last second. Dejection doesn't fit the bill at the moment; he knows what Mr. and Mrs. Cooper are like but even he doesn't think so little of them to believe that everything Mrs. Cooper said to him was a lie. "Sounds like something Tommy would say," he points out, if only because he doesn't want to be the subject of Janey's scrutiny at the moment.

Her voice is defensive as she says, "He's not wrong." It is uncannily clear where Tommy's influence dominates, and if he were just a little bit subtle about it, Alex might even enjoy it.

"They didn't do right by Danny but not everything's so cut and dry, Janey."

Alex isn't even looking at her but her demeanor transforms so starkly that he notices it even with his eyes on the road.

"You're sort of his friend, he doesn't really like you and you're not doing it for Mom and Dad. If you were, you wouldn't exactly be making friends, you know." Her voice rings hard in the car.

If it were any other day, Alex might gape. As it is, he frowns and says, "Where'd that come from? Tommy?"

"I  _can_  think for myself, thanks a lot. You're right, not everything's cut and dry. You just go to a lot of trouble to not do very much, Alex."

"What's that mean?" he asks, stumped.

She sighs harshly and slumps back in her seat. "You're not his friend, but you sure do fall over yourself looking out for him. Taylor says you take his shifts and everything."

Alex almost laughs. "When do you talk to Taylor Whitfield?"

"At Donut? Not like we get manicures together," she says irritably.

Alex pulls to a stop outside Mrs. Grady's apartment building and looks expectantly over at Janey. She looks right back with a faint frown.

"Are you mad at me?" Alex asks incredulously.

"No, I'd just like it if we could have an ice cream or something, I don't know. How's all this work, anyway?"

"You ask him?"

"He always says no. You should come along. Maybe he'd come then."

"Maybe."

She gives him a long look. "Maybe he really does like a strawberry sundae."

"Who knows?"

She cocks an eyebrow in skepticism and opens the door. "I bet you do."

Alex watches in bemusement as she gets out of the car. He isn't sure when Janey started sounding so much like Tommy.

* * *

Alex embraces the awkwardness and takes a weak pleasure in meeting Danny's eye at work. It's rather like giving into drowsiness. Danny in turn tiredly quirks his eyebrow and goes back to steaming milk.

It goes on like that for most of the day. Taylor affects an air of aloofness, goes about her work with frightening briskness and doesn't speak to either of them beyond what is necessary. At eight in the evening, she turns off the ovens before Alex can and rushes around for the last hour and a half. She even volunteers to lock up and Alex happily retreats to the back room.

He is fishing his car keys out of his locker when he hears the shuffle of feet in the doorway.

"Wanna go for a walk?" Danny asks.

Alex rubs at his eyes. "Really?"

"In the non-asshole part of town, I mean."

Not that there is any version or corner of this town where they take a walk together in the open, but he can give Danny enough credit to think of something.

"Don't worry, I'll hide you under my jacket."

"In that case," Alex mutters. They crunch gravel out in the lot behind Donut and stand in polite silence until Taylor and her lime green Cherokee disappear from sight.

"We'll probably have to drive to get any place worth walking," Alex remarks, as they watch her go.

"Lots of empty plots a mile back from my parents' house."

Alex doesn't frown at him, doesn't glance at him to check if car sex is what he has in mind. He just gets in the jeep and drives up to the bluff, past the houses until rocks roll under his tyres. Up here, the moon shines eerie bright and Alex can see Danny's face stark as he parks beside him.

They get out of their cars and into the night, and the orange from the town lights licks the line of Danny's jaw.

Alex leans his weight against the front bumper and says, "Not feeling adventurous, are you?"

"Probably not the way you're thinking," he says, voice barely above a whisper.

Alex laughs quietly and thinks that Danny can be a glorious dick sometimes. He doesn't know why, but he relaxes then. Danny stands near his own car, a narrow alley of distance separating them.

It's new enough, the thought that he has been on top of Danny and inside of him, that it has a dissonance to it. Curiously fractured from this reality where Alex relaxes against his car and Danny stands, shoulders set once again, waiting in his eyes.

The stillness is there again and Alex lets it go. He does not care for it and will not care about it until it becomes a problem. For now, he can recall intimacy and says things like, "I thought you'd be harder to talk to."

"Hm?" Danny says. He's looking straight ahead at the horizon, eyes bright from the town lights, but he is listening. "Sorry to disappoint."

"You didn't. Not me, in any case."

He expects Danny to ignore but instead, he shoots back, "Not after Sunday, I expect not."

There is no sting today. Alex doesn't have much problem reconciling his sentimentality with everything else that exists within him. He can take a dry pleasure from saying gentle things to Danny even when waiting, waiting lingers in the air and there is no place for this here.

Alex clears his throat. "You wanna get out of here?"

"No, I want to breathe. I want a breath of fresh air." He squeezes his eyes shut and sways on his feet. Instinctively, Alex puts a hand on his elbow and he stills. He dares to tighten his grip and Danny yanks his elbow away.

After a long moment, Danny says, "Mind if I say something out loud?"

Alex shrugs absently. He is not wounded or stung. It is easy to be passive when he's taking time off until Thursday.

"I've never said it before."

Alex almost rolls his eyes then. It is unfair to belittle but of course, he and Danny can never talk about what movies they like. "Go on then."

"I made the wrong choice in leaving," he says. His hands are shoved deep in his pocket, arms tense as if he is only just preventing himself from huddling. "I said it was worth it, but it really wasn't, Alex."

Alex blinks. "Oh." He has never felt any particular kinship with Danny Cooper beyond the obvious, doesn't attach any sentiment of his own to Danny's grand journey to Albuquerque and back. Hasn't really given any thought to Danny until their paths had crossed. Even as he'd stood in Danny's childhood bedroom that first time, all he'd wanted was something to lift the crushing weight off his chest.

"I'm telling you 'cause you're mixed up with them, right?" Danny says, oddly pedantic.

Alex glances at him and sees something like pity in his eyes. He realizes, with a jolt, that he feels little then. Young and protected, under Danny's warning gaze. "But I thought about what you said, and you know it's pointless. You said it yourself."

Alex rubs at his jaw and evenly asks, "What are you getting at?"

"You said yourself that it isn't worth trying to fix what's gone, but you keep trying. And you think you're being patient and noble but you're just making things harder for yourself."

Alex bristles then, sharply annoyed. He knew he would regret saying it, especially regret it because Jack's words eclipsed everything else that day.

"What we're doing, it's just making it worse. I'm the one doing you a favour here, and if I hadn't wanted it so much, you wouldn't be here and you wouldn't know the first thing about me."

"Fav-" Alex cuts himself right off and stays very quiet and very still. Strange, to be so starkly wrong about someone. Stranger even to think that someone is stupider than they really are. No, clearly Danny does not think Alex is in control here.

"I'm not scared that you're gonna turn around and take a crowbar to my face or break my heart. I'm scared that you're a fucking idiot. You're just like them. And when you don't look at things the way they are, they blow right up in your face, Alex. I told you at that party. I told you from the start." Danny's voice pitches at the end, as if time is running out.

The gravity of his words startles Alex. "That's a lot," he says, hedges.

"Give me some credit, alright? I know all about what went down with your parents. It's easy enough to find out."

"Right." Alex doesn't try to hide how irked he is.

"I know it ended badly. And I know that when things end badly like that, lots of things get cut short. And you don't get closure. When's the last time you talked to your mother?"

"What the fuck is this?" Alex points out as calmly as if he were asking what time it is.

Danny considers him. In that moment, he is neither defensive nor aggressive. He just  _is_ , and Alex knows that this is more than he's ever seen just as he has no idea why he has suddenly become the focus of it. "I'm saying, Alex, that when the lies you're telling my parents fall down around you, I'd like not to get caught up in it. And I'm rather afraid that I'm already caught up in it." Matter of fact, as if he is used to this kind of weird.

"Oh," Alex says.

"I was horny and you were far more convenient than any of my other options. I shouldn't have but I did. And now I'm caught right up in you, aren't I? A pretty effective mess so that I've had one conversation with my sister and I've already lied to her about you."

"And you're blaming me?" Alex asks flatly.

Danny sighs softly. "You think I'm fighting you, but I'm not. I've already lied to Janey but I don't want to spend my first month back home lying to everyone. Okay?"

"I still don't know what you're getting at."

Danny's eyes narrow but he lets it go. His voice is affable even as he says, "I'm saying that I know you're running damage control. Admittedly, being fucked by a small town hick as a distraction is not a situation I ever thought I'd be in, but here we are."

"Sounds like you're fighting me," Alex says shortly.

Danny laughs tightly. "Pay attention, alright? I'm not fighting you. I'm just telling you that we're on the same page. And you're a bit unsettling in how you manipulate and make it seem like a total accident. But I don't mind being on the same page as you. It's refreshing."

Danny's phone rings and he cancels the call without looking. "Listen, it's good to take some things head on, alright? Don't over-think all this too much."

Alex glares at Danny, at the phone clutched tight in his hand. Gravel crunches hard under the tires of an approaching car. He doesn't bother asking who it is. He is, instead, thinking fast. Even if it weren't a full moon, he would know that it is Tommy.

"You did me a favour so I'm doing you a favour." Danny leans forward to tuck the phone in Alex's pocket. "Keep that safe for me, would you?"

"If that's Tommy - Noreen won't let you work with a busted up face." He sounds calmer than he feels - and keeps his hands in his pockets because to do otherwise would be stupider than he's already been.

Danny looks past Alex's shoulder just as a car door slams shut behind them. "I just told you not to over-think this, Alex. All he wants is to hit me harder than I've ever been hit and if anyone's got that right, it's him. He's a sentimental little shit." He spares Alex a punishing glance, as if he thinks Alex is being obtuse on purpose.

Tommy doesn't bother to be cloak and dagger about it. Instead, he walks nice and noisy on the gravel, stops a good way away from them and lights a joint. The click of a lighter and his face in sharp relief."Alex, how is it that you manage to crash every party?" Then surprisingly offhand, he says to Danny, "Told you he can't take a hint."

"He can take a hint fine," Danny says.

Tommy frowns then. "This is sanctioned, then? By our overlord here."

Danny looks at Alex as he says, "Think of him as a referee."

Alex's skin crawls and he keeps his mouth shut. He is not here as a fucking emissary for Mrs. Cooper, to keep Tommy's face unharmed so that Mrs. Cooper, who cannot bear to go out into her own yard to talk to Danny, won't have to stare at his handiwork every time she looks at Tommy's face. Alex's fingers twitch.

"I've got work tomorrow," Danny says to Tommy, a disclaimer, a laying down of rules.

Naturally, Tommy aims for the face.

Alex's fingers go white around his phone.

Danny doesn't go down as easily as Alex expects, only stumbles a few steps back. For a long moment, he looks at Tommy - a challenge in his eyes, a bloody grin on his face. Tommy's face is livid red and heat pulses in the air, a gust of humid breeze that sends sand sticking to Danny's bloody chin.

"I've got work tomorrow," Danny says again, his voice thick. "Wanna hurry this up, Tommy?" He is frighteningly real in that moment, murder in his eyes, up against Tommy, but probably up against the world too.

They want this more than Alex can comprehend, but he believes it because he sees it in their faces.

 _Not yet_ , he will not stop this yet. He will not bear the brunt of both their derision. Not yet.

"You sanctimonious piece of shit, Jesus Christ. You think you're fucking Harvey Milk, don't you?" Tommy closes the distance between them in two long strides. He lands a punch so hard that Danny nearly loses his footing and just barely stumbles out of the way of the next blow. "Find your little utopia, Danny? Or is every place just as much a shithole as this place?"

"You weren't all wrong," Danny says, nonchalant, as if his shirt-collar isn't red with blood.

Tommy's face clouds over in an instant. "I told you that six years ago." He crowds in fast.

Danny lands a solid punch to his gut and kicks him down. He plants a foot in the soft part of Tommy's stomach, economical and swift, as if their words must be bracketed by punches and he is only checking the boxes. "I'm fucking glad I left you behind, Tommy. You all got exactly what you deserved." He lingers, slow, angry. He doesn't get in another hit after that.

Tommy kicks his feet right out from under him and scrabbles, hissing under his breath. He punches Danny thrice, gasping at the pain even as his fist hits home each time. He pulls away bloody-handed, bloody-faced too with flecks of Danny's blood. "We didn't deserve five years of you turning them into ghosts. And we're gonna pay for it until they finally decide to die and leave us alone."

An unbearable prickle of sweat sweeps over Alex's neck. He lingers, indecisive - even as he wonders, nearly hysterical, why they are talking so much, why Danny's face is softening even as he struggles to throw Tommy off.

Danny gets a leg out from under Tommy and the kick he lands on Tommy's chest sends him sprawling three feet away, knocks the breath out of him so completely that for a long ten seconds, there is no sound except for Danny scrabbling to his feet. Then with the sound of a dying animal, Tommy draws breath into his lungs.

Alex and Danny move at the same time.

Alex reaches Tommy first. "We're done here." He says it to Danny, dares him to come closer but Danny doesn't touch him. His face darkens, but he does not move.

Behind them, Tommy gets to his feet. "Maybe next time, don't bring this dipshit along," he says as he rounds on them.

Alex shoves him back, hard. He is wary of the precious little distance between Danny and Tommy, is far too conscious of Tommy's still unmarred face which needs to stay that way. "Did you want a souvenir, Tommy? Go home."

"Yeah, I think I'll take one. Just so Mommy and Daddy know Danny isn't yet tired of fucking up other people's lives."

Danny plants a business-like punch to Tommy's face. "There you go. Tell them it's probably time to hide their children."

* * *

"What the fuck was that?" Alex spits, as soon as Tommy gets in his car.

Danny shoots him a bitter, disappointed smile. "I'm giving you a chance here, Alex. Don't be obtuse."

"Sending him home with a black eye is not doing me any favours."

Danny gingerly presses along his nose, seemingly absent-minded. But his voice is poison when he says, "You need to leave this to me before this gets any messier. My parents are going to face that I'm here sooner or later."

"And then fucking  _what_!?"

"Then I do whatever the fuck I want, Alex. Same as if I wasn't fucking you." There is a nasty cut in his lip. "What about this don't you understand?"

"And fuck everybody else?"

"I'm trying to show you, Alex, that all four of them can pretend like I don't exist but the fact remains, Tommy called me. I didn't call him." Danny pauses to spit out blood. "And if you leave this to me, I can get you out of their periphery better than you could manage yourself. I'm assuming that you're not planning on sticking around them for the rest of your natural life."

Alex blinks. "What the fuck, Danny?" Panic is lingering far too close and he wants to grab Danny and shake him hard.

Danny massages the bridge of his nose. "How do I put this more plainly? They can try and ignore me for as long as they like but sooner or later, they won't be able to. And you should probably spare yourself the misery of being shown out the door simply because you didn't run damage control well enough?"

"And you're going to keep brawling with Tommy until they can't ignore you any more?"

"It's always good to remind people of the damage they've done. Think of it as my summer project. I don't like being ignored by the people who ruined my life."

Alex is certain that the past ten minutes have driven him insane. It can be the only reason he says, too loudly, "You chose to leave."

Danny's face clouds over in an instant. "You would have left too. It's what you should do before they find out about you. You were insane to ever set foot in that house."

"I don't regret it."

"They will throw you by the fucking wayside, Alex. And I'm not going to help you when they do."

"Probably not," Alex says. It is a mistake to say it, he sounds far too flippant.

Danny scowls. "Whatever you're running from is not worse than what they're going to do you when they find out. They will ruin your life in this town."

"And you're helping me, is that it?" Alex says with a tight smile.

"I'm saying that you don't have to be around for the end of this mess. You don't have to do the stupid things they ask of you. You won't be able to, once Tommy gets started. You're not going to be mitigating anything. And my parents will make you believe it's your fault." And it is not the Danny who's been kicked down too many times. In that moment, he is not afraid. He is looking Alex straight in the eye, touching his chest lightly as if he is appealing.

And Alex realizes, with a jolt, that that is exactly what Danny is doing. "Janey-"

"Stop trying to be a hero. It's the first thing you'll regret when you won't be able to get a job in this town."

"I'm careful," Alex bites out.

Danny laughs and clenches his fingers in Alex's shirt. "You're not."

"I'm not trying to be a hero. I'm trying to -" Alex pushes away Danny's hand. Painfully, he has to push away the urge to yank at his hair. It is harrowing to say, "I haven't got that many choices, Danny." Maybe a week ago, before Jack had said his last and before that flicker of distrust in Janey's eye. Alex is failing again, and suddenly Reilly's apology seems perfectly useless for all the good it's doing him. He feels just as out of control as he would without it.

"I'm giving you a chance to hand this mess over to me, Alex. Forget about Janey, driving her or talking to her. Forget it. Go home and deal with your shit. I'm trying to help you."

"No," Alex says, probably too loud but he doesn't care. "Just - she's the one who has to pay for this and you know it." It's the truth and yet, such a meager part of it that it may as well be a lie. Alex barely knows how to do what Danny is asking.

The Danny, who brushes past Alex then, is neither guarded nor defensive nor gloriously drunk. Somewhere in the past twenty minutes, he's let that fall right off him and Alex sees now that he is fighting. He is only doing what Alex has resented him for failing to do all along.


	16. Chapter 16

The air-conditioning sputters and struggles then goes quiet for minutes at a time. Taylor takes to glaring at it, and whenever he passes her periphery, glaring at him too.

"This is fucking pointless," she declares, around seven p.m.

It's Wednesday - one of the first in months that Jack isn't at the corner table. Their first customer of the hour has departed with a milkshake in hand, and Taylor at least waits until the door is closed behind him to sharply ask, "So am I supposed to be reporting him to Noreen or not?"

"Leave it, Taylor," he says. He doesn't think he's being overly defensive but he also spent five minutes looking his shirt over for bloodstains before wearing it to work, so he can't be too sure of anything today.

She looks archly at him. "Why would I do that? He's missed two shifts this week. Remember?"

"Yeah-"

"And this isn't even your shift, remember that too?" She is thinking of what she said at Benji's party, this much is clear.

The AC rumbles to life. Alex glances at it and Taylor does not.

"Relax," Alex mutters. He shouldn't be bothering at this point. She is not crossing any lines; he is the one covering for someone who's at home icing bruises that will take a week to heal.

"What is it?" she says finally, very quietly - Alex would hazard suspiciously.

He doesn't get to find out the extent of her suspicion. For all her creativity, even she couldn't guess the events that have led him here when he should be at home. One instant, they are standing by the espresso machine. The next, the glass front of the shop is a network of silvery, spidery cracks. A hollow thunk resounds in the silence. Maybe it's the acoustics or maybe his brain has already caught up with what is happening, but in that instant, Alex feels acutely like he is trapped in a box.

For three long seconds, the cracks remain that way. Then with another thunk, the cracks split and the two of them are looking at the pavement, the road, the storefront an unfortunate picture frame.

Manageable, if not for the brick that sails through the gaping hole at an angle and takes down ten of Taylor's pictures with it.

* * *

They don't find all of them. They try their best in the time they have before Trevor shows up in a confused rage. But before he does, they track down nine of them and in hysterical silence, set them on the counter as if they're building a fucking shrine. The tenth is knocked under the pastry case, but they won't find it until Thursday.

"I'm getting fired again, aren't I?" Taylor says, icily.

"Why the fuck would you get fired?" He says it louder than he should. He is angry, he thinks, but there are also cars passing by a mere ten yards away and he will not examine this until he is at home, alone. "Taylor-"

They are standing by the front, gingerly balanced on shards of broken glass. There's no one - yet - just the cool air from their overtaxed air conditioner whipping away into the evening heat. Occasionally, there is the pop of tiny shards cracking under their weight.

Taylor turns to give him a look so heavy with loathing that Alex blinks in surprise. "Damn right I'm going to tell them about him." She says with a mad, laughable righteous anger.

"That someone threw a brick in here because Danny wasn't showing up to work?" Before today, he has never felt the urge to tell her to shut the fuck up. He feels it now and lets it show.

"Guess I shouldn't have wasted my breath on Friday," she snaps.

"Don't waste your breath today. You're not making any sense, anyway."

"You're such an asshole. Him being here from the start was a big fucking mistake."

"You were happy enough that first day."

"Because I thought it would be fun. Not because I thought some psycho would literally throw a brick through the front."

"You were expecting it." He doesn't know why he says it, what they're arguing about. He just wants her to be quiet.

She draws back in indignation. "What the fuck? Did that brick conk you in the fucking head? I was expecting it so everything's okay now?"

Alex has to bite his tongue and it still doesn't work. "You were expecting a brick. A brick's what we've got."

"So you're saying my brothers had something to do with this?"

"That's not what I said."

"That's what you said."

"Alright, then, that's what I said. I think one of your brothers did this," Alex snaps.

"They'd at least have the fucking sense not to send my shit sprawling all over the floor. Jesus, assholes."

He doesn't know who she means, and he doesn't care. She sounds surprisingly level for someone who's just being gracelessly accused - and for that, Alex is grateful.

"I'm sorry, I didn't mean that."

"You're probably fucking right, anyway. Jesus, fuck." She throws him a helpless glance. "This is going to be a mess, Alex."

"I know. We should clean this up."

Neither of them goes to get a broom. Taylor's dithering grows more pronounced and Alex has the foresight to press one hand to the small of her back until she calms down.

"Maybe I shouldn't have called my dad," she remembers to say, just as Trevor pulls to a stop in front of them.

He slams the door hard enough to make the car shake and as he comes in through the glassless storefront, Alex thinks he might laugh. Then Benji's car pulls up right next to Trevor's on the curb and the urge blinks out. "What's this then?" Trevor says. He stands stocky in the middle of the shop, an air of bewilderment about him.

Alex and Taylor exchange a glance.

"Someone threw a brick in here, Dad," Taylor pipes up.

Alex is glad she says it with some conviction. He's certain that Taylor being droll about this would only infuriate Trevor.

"A brick!" Trevor looks at Alex in astonishment.

Alex nods weakly and for a few minutes, they stand there. Trevor looks at the fallen picture frames as if they are the corpse of some beloved son and Alex stands there, uncomfortable. He and Taylor exchange a glance.

Benji lingers on the pavement, very still. "Everybody alright?"

Taylor snatches a napkin from a nearby table and pats dry the sweat beading on her face. "I'll live." Then with a heavy sigh, she goes to the backroom.

Trevor clucks in outrage in the middle of the shop. The yellow of the streetlights washes out the teal paint on the walls and Alex frowns at it. In the midst of it all, Benji stands in a t-shirt still damp with sweat from work.

"Alex?"

"Yeah-" He has to clear his throat. "I'm fine. Just waiting for Noreen to show up and fire someone."

Benji looks like he might smile, but he doesn't. They look at each other for a long moment, then nodding very slightly, Benji comes to stand beside him and says, "I finally quit."

Alex smiles despite himself. "Was that today?"

"Yeah, I was with Trevor when I heard. You sure you're alright? You look kinda… out of it."

Alex is trying to think of something when a car door slams in the street. It's Noreen, with the mechanic friend of a regular customer in tow, probably here to fix the window with swathes of electric tape. Alex looks at the two of them and feels the urge to sit down somewhere.

* * *

Noreen grills him for a good five minutes and is kind enough to let him sit while she does it. Then while the mechanic stands staring at the storefront and Noreen and Trevor argue about repairs, Benji plops down on the edge of a chair next to them.

Everything's weak yellow from the streetlights, smelling of dust and the air conditioner throwing out damp air.

"You sure you're alright?"

"Yeah, just tired," Alex mutters.

Benji jerks a chin at Trevor and says, "You'd think he owns the damn place."

"He owns the coffee machine, and half the employees," Alex mumbles.

"You know, there's lots of places where shit like this doesn't happen."

"Did everywhere else kick out the homophobes?" Alex says. He cannot muster the energy to talk louder than a mumble, and he is acutely aware of Benji leaning closer to hear, of the heat of his breath near his shoulder. It's too easy to remember him saying I'd wait for you - and no matter how many long seconds Alex sits, trying to put it off to a post-coital haze and the soft intimacy of sharing hard secrets in bed, he cannot. If there was a worse place to be thinking of it and wanting Benji to come closer, Alex does not know it. He rubs hard at his face, and decides that the tightening in his throat isn't real. It can't be, because if it is, Alex thinks he might cry in this shithole, in front of two of his bosses.

"You don't need to be here, Alex," Benji says lowly.

"Here or here?" Alex snaps.

"Jesus, I mean Donut. I wouldn't - talk about that now."

"You already talked about it."

"That was stupid. I'll go ask Noreen if you can leave."

Alex has to clear his throat before he can speak. "It's alright. I'll do it myself."

But Benji just presses a hand against his shoulder until he sits back down. He's halfway across the shop before Alex can quell the sound that has trapped itself in his throat. He thinks he's losing it quite spectacularly, but there's really no way to tell. If wanting Benji to touch him for two seconds longer is a measure of these things, then he's certain he lost it six months ago. For now, all he can do is sit, body tight with the effort it takes to hold himself still.

He gets a few seconds of that tenuous peace, of believing that he will get to close his eyes in peace tonight and put everything off until tomorrow. A few seconds is all. Then he hears another car, Danny's car, come to a stop out front - no one's parking in the dirt lot behind Donut and the road is crowded with cars now - and there is a moment of solid clarity. In that instant, he knows that there is no reason for Danny to be here, unless he is doing it just to be contrary, just to set things knocking - and the realization makes him see fucking red. He stands up and brushes past where Noreen, Trevor, Benji and the mechanic are clustered. He is out of the shop before Danny even gets a chance to close the car door behind him.

He knows everyone is watching and he knows he doesn't need to be doing this. Whatever damage he is trying to prevent, it happened the moment Trevor found something to focus all of his bewildered, befuddled rage on.

Alex stops on the very edge of the pavement and puts some gruffness in his voice as he says, "You don't need to be here. You'll only make things worse."

Danny at least does him the courtesy of keeping his voice low as he says, "Thanks for the chivalry. How about you let me deal with something for once, Alex?"

It's jarring that it doesn't bother him when Danny brushes past him, without a glance, or even that Benji sees him being dismissed, sees consummate proof of how clever Alex thinks he is, and just how clever he really isn't. What bothers him is that Danny mocks him - as if Alex is someone harboring a hero complex, an eager little boy looking to be everyone's facilitator in all things. As if, for all of the fortnight Alex has known him, there was ever a moment when the look in Danny's eye could have been ignored. From when he was hammered in his parents' living room right to when he was hammered in his parents' back yard; as if Alex hasn't seen the pathetic longing in his eyes, that itch to be seen when all everyone wants is to pretend like he doesn't exist.

"I'll pay for the damage," Danny is saying somewhere behind him.

Alex pats his pockets for cigarettes he knows aren't there and behind him, Trevor's voice rises on the words 'my daughter'. There is a scuffle behind him, Alex doesn't turn to look. The squeak of shoes on lino and he has three very long seconds to decide if this is something he wants to stop.

He turns - he doesn't know why. Maybe to contradict Danny, maybe because it is his instinct to fix, to mitigate, even though in that instant, he feels no shred of sympathy for any of them.

Noreen is already standing between Danny and Trevor, talking to someone on the phone as if she wasn't bodily separating two men. Stupid, Danny is stupid to ever have come here.

Noreen gives him a look, a handing over of some fucking baton, then brushes past him to go outside. He and Benji move at the same time, Benji with the air of someone who's only happened upon this fuckup. "I'll drop Taylor home, if you like, Trev-"

"I'll do it myself," Trevor bites out and then he's shoving past Alex too.

Benji waits until he's out before he grins at Alex and says, "He doesn't even give me my paycheck. No way he's giving me his kid."

Alex relaxes fractionally. "Thanks, Ben."

"No problem."

Taylor comes hurrying out of the backroom, bag slung over her shoulder. "I'm leaving apparently. See you whenever, Alex."

"Bye, Taylor."

"Hopefully no one's getting too fired over this," she says with a long glance at Danny.

Then she's gone and the three of them linger with an avalanche of broken glass crunching underfoot.

Danny folds his arms with the air of a martyr.

"Who told you to come around?" Alex asks, as he yanks off his apron.

"Taylor did, quite jubilantly," Danny says.

"You can go. You've made your point." Alex cringes at the awkward, intimate hurt in his voice - the sort of thing he never really lets through. Never in his voice, at least. Never in front of anyone else.

Danny's eyes narrow fractionally as if he cannot figure something out, then his gaze alights on Benji and he relaxes. "Right. Hi, there."

Benji smiles very slightly and nods. "It's probably better if you go home. Someone might still be hanging around and it'll be a bigger mess for Noreen to deal with."

Danny snorts and nods again. Won't stop nodding, in fact. "Synced right up, huh?"

"More or less, unfortunately," Benji says smoothly. "Who'd you get into a tussle with?"

"No one too important. I'll be going then."

"Watch your back."

Danny gives Benji a withering look but Alex senses it's more to do with the phrasing than the actual sentiment. "Right, sorry about the mess."

"Not your mess, unless you threw the brick," Alex says flatly.

"That's generous of you." He shoves his hands into his pockets but Alex can see how he hunches, resists the urge to fold his arms as he goes back to his car. Far from afraid, but nothing like the easy bravado of yesterday. If this is what doubt looks like - but Alex pushes that thought cleanly away. Danny's already committed to making things difficult for him - and for all that Alex has been prepared to salvage since the moment he came back, it's too easy in that moment to feel like Danny's had the head start.

Benji nudges a shard of glass with his shoe. "What are you thinking?"

A question, that's all. Easily asked, but it is too intimate - not the sort of territory they wander into. It's too easy to go from 'what are you thinking?' to 'what are you feeling?'; it's not as if Alex has an adequate answer for either. "Bed."

Benji laughs.

"My bed, me alone in it, thanks," Alex mutters darkly.

But Benji still ruffles his hair and shoves him in the ribs until he thinks it would be just as easy to laugh as to cry.

"Ease off, Ben. I'm two seconds from losing it," Alex says weakly.

"See, not that hard to say what you're thinking, is it?"

Sharply, Alex wants to grab him and keep him very, very still. Away from his ribs, and away from him, but just close enough. He is getting under Alex's skin in a way he can't manage any other day and Alex doesn't know what to do with him, how to tell him to fuck off but not go too far.

"Jesus, you really are, aren't you?" Benji says carefully, drily. "What'd I miss?"

"I'll tell you in the morning."

"You busy tonight?" He says lightly.

Alex rubs hard at his face and shakes his head. "No, just alone in my bed. Tomorrow, please."

"Alright, call me if someone gets too excited."

* * *

Alex crawls into bed near midnight, snatches Reilly's pillow off her bed and curls against it tight until his limbs loosen and the sharpness in his throat eases. It's Wednesday for a little while longer - so he lets himself breathe. Just breathes and thinks about the moles dotting Benji's jaw and the black eye blooming on Danny's face. Even lets himself wonder if the latter is as intrinsic a part of Danny as Benji's moles are of him.

He takes care to follow that up with 'Stupid' and doesn't think anything that frivolous for the rest of the night.

* * *

Sunlight prickles hot on his face. A door closes somewhere; the creak is familiar to him, just as everything in this house now is familiar to him. Six months isn't long enough for the important bits, but for inconsequential things - like the creak of a door fading to subconscious memory - it is just long enough.

Even in half-sleep, he knows there shouldn't be anyone at home. He wakes hard and is half out of bed, feet tangled in the sheets, heart thundering in his chest when the door opens.

He sits hard, doesn't manage to school his expression in time as Benji pokes his head in. "Morning. The door was unlocked."

"What?" He says, for no reason. He cannot manage to wipe the stricken look off his face. The floor gives a lurch as he stands up too fast. "Yeah… uh, gimme a minute."

Benji gives him a long look. "I'll be in the kitchen."

His shirt is damp with sweat, he is only half-sure that he didn't wake up from a nightmare and even as he splashes water on his face and viciously brushes his teeth, he cannot determine why his heart should be beating so fast. The possibility of anyone hurting him lingers on the far side of probable. Even when he doesn't know anything else, he knows this, takes care to know it lest he spend all day thinking he is being stared at.

He regards himself in the mirror, harshly critical and decides, grudgingly, that this must be what it feels like to be shaken up. Strange that it's so easily explained. Last night would rattle anyone. Taylor probably woke hard today too. Noreen probably didn't sleep at all.

There.

There is comfort in feeling something so easily explained. Most things this week haven't been. He slams a hand on the switchboard, goes out into the hall and checks the locks.

Fine.

Benji's eating a donut and regarding the folded up paper stuck in the toaster. "I'm scared to touch that."

"They're apartment listings." Alex peeks into the paper bag on the kitchen table. "Donuts for breakfast, really?"

"It's a treat." He smirks, and Alex isn't brave enough to question him, to follow him to an answer. He has a wretched feeling it might have to do with Danny. "Why is this in the toaster?"

"I couldn't bother looking for the matches." Alex takes the lid off a coffee cup and takes a small sip.

"Are you trying to set the house on fire?" Benji asks, around the last bite of his donut.

"I was considering it."

"Huh." Benji says and wipes his hands on his jeans. "That's something, at least." He's grinning, a streak of sugar on his bottom lip.

Alex considers backing him into the hallway, out of sight of the kitchen window and fucking him in the living room. But it's Thursday and instead, Alex says, "You can ask about it."

"I don't want to." He shrugs, almost helplessly. "Last night - you ever felt embarrassed for someone? It feels… fucking. Jesus, I wish you'd be smarter about him."

"I'm not smitten, Benji-"

"It'd be better if you were. It would make a hell of a lot more sense."

Alex puts the coffee down and leans against the fridge, more heavily than he likes. This feels starkly like a reckoning, something he doesn't want to fail at.

"Who did he fight?"

"Tommy."

"You were there." Not a question.

Alex frowns and nods.

"And you didn't stop it?"

"Danny told me not to."

"He told you not to," Benji says flatly. "He told you not to. What does that even mean, Alex?"

"He told me it was a mistake ever going near his parents. And that if I just let things run their course and didn't bother with them anymore, everything'd be alright. My… our secret wouldn't come out." He laughs; there is nothing like the burn of sunlight on his bare arm to make the past few days seem unbelievably ridiculous.

Benji doesn't laugh. "So he was threatening you?"

"No, he wasn't. He was… giving me a heads-up."

"He was being courteous." He smiles then, a wry twist of his mouth that is not nearly as light-hearted as Alex would have liked. "That's awful nice of him."

Alex frowns at his coffee cup for a long time before he picks it up. He dares to glance at Benji and finds him looking. "What? Are you mad too?"

"Who else is mad?"  
"Janey-"

"Oh, what the fuck, Alex?"

"I wasn't... Fuck's sake, when I meant we could talk about it, I didn't mean all of it."

"What else were we going to talk about? The size of Danny's dick? Chrissakes." He shuffles agitatedly in place and Alex sees it then. The thought plain as day on his face, asking himself why he is bothering when he's barely got three more weeks in this town.

"This is stupid," Alex says, flatly.

"They were easier to ignore when you weren't fucking their kid." Benji shoves his hands in his pockets. "I figured I probably should be bothered by all this at some point. This is a good a time as any, right?"

"Are you? Bothered?" Even after he says it, Alex isn't sure why.

"So do you want me to be jealous? Or is concern too boring?" Benji snaps.

Alex smiles, very slightly. "You think I'm doing this for attention."

"No, I don't. I know you that much, at least."

"That sounds loaded," Alex mutters. He cannot take his eyes off Benji's face, because there is something a bit raw there. He doesn't feel quite like himself in that moment.

"Shut the fuck up, Alex. I'm feeling a bit over-invested at the moment, you know. I've been feeling that way for a while."

"Oh."

Benji's eyes narrow. "Don't play fast and loose with me right now."

Alex keeps himself very still. He's acting like a child, he knows it. He cannot believe the evenness in Benji's voice. Mature. It's a word Alex is beginning to resent, much like replacement - he's been careless with it. It's easy to joke about it but it's another thing entirely to see Benji reeling in his anger, to say that he's been feeling some way for a while.

It takes him a moment to go back to that word. Over-invested. Benji must see it in his face because he holds up a finger. "You better be careful what you say next."

"Fine, let me think." A shaft of sunlight is merrily beating away at his arm. It doesn't make the moment seem any less unreal. "You're not saying that, are you?"

"No, I'm not. I don't-" He takes a very deep breath. "That's not what I'm saying, alright? I wouldn't say that, anyway. Even if I did."

"What? Why not?"

Benji fixes him with a hard stare. "Nevermind that. You'll get your feelings hurt."

"Fuck you," Alex says, flatly.

Benji glares at him and holds out for a long time, glaring all the while, until he very carefully says, "If it's about you unloading your crap on me, I listen. But if I do it, you don't want to hear it. You're childish like that, Alex and I don't trust you enough to tell you I love you."

The first thing he considers is 'So you don't love me?' and there's probably no greater affirmation of what Benji's trying to say so he just nods and takes care to hold Benji's gaze as he does it. "Alright."

"Sorry you had to hear all that before breakfast," Benji says drily.

"Fine, okay." He clears his throat, and sits down. There are enough donuts in the bag to feed a family and Alex picks out one with a chocolate glaze and sits chewing it, ears faintly burning.

"Just so we're clear, when I say over-invested, I don't mean that I love you."

"Got it."

"Okay, good." Benji pulls out a chair with an almighty clatter and sits down across from him.

Alex drains his coffee cup, finishes the donut and licks his fingers clean. The kitchen is hot but neither of them move.

"Someone's definitely going to be visiting today," Alex says, finally.

"That why you looked so spooked when you woke up?" Benji says. He's sitting back in the chair, the bottom of one shoe pressed flat against Alex's chair leg. Alex can feel the side of his shoe pressed snug against his calf.

"Yesterday… that was a hate crime," Alex says. He carefully tests the words on his tongue, resists the urge to repeat them.

Benji's shrugs wearily.

"I woke up this morning and I was scared, I guess." He's talking slowly but surprisingly, it's not hard to admit it.

"Yeah?"

Alex frowns at him. "Sometimes I forget to lock the door at night. It happens sometimes. Lily's the one who locks it now."

"Yeah."

Alex blows out a heavy sigh and meets Benji's eyes. "I was still scared. I thought I was going to get hurt. I never thought something like that before. No matter how much we fuck around, Ben, we're not careless. I know we aren't."

Benji frowns then and touches his hand on the table, very lightly. Alex takes it, holds it intently.

With a deliberate shrug, Benji says, "I was scared too."

"Good. I mean-"

"I know what you mean," Benji says wearily.

"Good," Alex says. His voice is too thin but at least, it doesn't break. He looks at their hands on the table. The doorbell rings, but Alex doesn't move. He looks at their hands.

**Author's Note:**

> I've already posted 10 chapters of Prospect on fictionpress and will post one chapter a day on AO3 until I'm caught up here. I'm really eager to know which platform works better for me.  
> Once I'm caught up on AO3, I will update every 10-20 days until mid-June. After that, I'm hoping to post a new chapter every 7 days.
> 
> Feedback is always appreciated. So whether you hate it or love it or are on the fence about it, any opinion you share really helps me know whether or not I am succeeding in telling the story I want to tell.  
> Cheers.


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